“Through the thick and thin of it” features a series of historical and artist-captured photographs of Vancouver’s Chinatown community, rallying together in the surrounding vicinity of the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen in so-called “Vancouver.” This work commemorates how Chinatowns across Turtle Island have historically and presently been such sites of resistance—to live and thrive against colonial white supremacist violence including greed, inequity, and gentrification. At the same time, it has also been a fight for the people, particularly the working poor and our elders, and for peace.

The photographs were mounted onto wooden cradle boards and the figures and their protest banners have been isolated with thick, white acrylic paint. From a rally in the 1930s highlighting the death of Chinese workers due to severe negligence and another against fascism, war and invasion, to the 2017 and 2023 resistance movements opposing the 105 Keefer development, my video stitches together images that honour the fighting spirit of Chinatown’s residents and its allies — united, powerful, daring, and hopeful.

Made for the Mt. Pleasant Community Art Screen Juried Open Call 2024-2025

This work is also part of my ongoing research project, “The sun will always set,” which used public archives to explore the period leading up to, during, and beyond the Exclusion Era years (1923-1947) in Vancouver, British Columbia, and across so-called Canada.