Call for Participants – Upcoming Installation by Snack Witch Joni Cheung!
Later this month, upcoming Main Gallery artist Snack Witch Joni Cheung will be setting up a clothesline-style art installation in the Main Gallery… and she needs your participation!
For the installation, titled bring back as souvenirs, Joni would like to invite St. John’s community members to borrow a towel. For the purpose of the installation, participants will take a towel from EE (provided by the artist), use the towel at home for a brief period of time, then return the used towel to EE. Joni will be washing the towels and hanging them to dry in the gallery as part of their installation.
(Please note: you can use the towel as you would a dish/kitchen towel, but please avoid any very heavy staining through materials such as paints/markers/pens.)
Towels must be returned to Eastern Edge by May 17th, 2025!
Register here to participate by borrowing a towel, and we will get in touch with you!
bring back as souvenirs, Photo Credit: Danny Luong
More about the project:
bring back as souvenirs developed from Cheung’s interest in the Good Morning Towel, a banal object they grew up with in Chinese restaurants and Hong Kong style cafes. In 2019, she came across these towels as a display at a Hong Kong museum. Seeing them not being used for their intended purpose was jarring. Their relationship with these objects shifted and she became curious about how they came to be.
Snack Witch couldn’t find any sources traditionally valued within academia to support my research. They waded through Facebook groups and personal blogs picking out phrases that depicted how people interacted with the towels. She selected four that illustrate the ways they’ve seen these objects move in the world and screen-printed them onto towels sourced by their mother.
As part of this exhibition, they invite local friends/residents of the host organization to borrow a towel. The objects live with their temporary guests: collecting dust, dirt and stains. Accumulated stains become documents of the ways they’ve been used to care for other people and objects outside of the presentation space. The towels are then hand-washed by Cheung and hung to dry in the gallery.
bring back as souvenirs, Photo Credit: Danny Luong