Sunken Histories

SYNOPSIS

My 2003 exhibition, Sunken Histories was based upon my documentation of an abandoned Chinese tenant farm located beside a section of the Fraser River delta on the Musqueam Reserve. This exhibit explored layers of land use practices that have effaced the land, looking at what is left behind, what this reveals and how I negotiate these trace histories through my art.

In my research, I discovered that a truck-gardener, Chow Chee, once leased a five-acre parcel of land from the Musqueam band. Chee was granted a permit to occupy, cultivate and grow agricultural products for sale from April 1936 to March 1937. When Chee refused to pay taxes levied by the city of Vancouver, a court case ensued. In the 1941 case, “The City of Vancouver V. Chow Chee”, Chee appealed the action of the City of Vancouver to recover the taxes. The case took place at the old Vancouver Court House, now the Vancouver Art Gallery. When Chee lost his case, questions were raised about the city having the right to levy taxes on an Indian Reserve. This case parallels a more recent controversial issue of the Musqueam band raising the rents of leaseholders in the same area, increases that would reflect current market values. The case was settled in the Supreme Court of Canada in favor of the leaseholders. Some saw this decision as reflective of colonial attitudes regarding Indigenous land rights.

My exhibition, Sunken Histories focused on the aesthetics of the site as well as allowing meaning to be drawn from its multilayered histories. The research for this show involved searching through old newspapers, books and maps found in the archives. I did not try to define these group’s histories through the representations found in the exhibit. Sunken Histories revealed the incompleteness of such an activity. The inability to reconstruct the historical totality was acted out through sculpture, drawing and digital means. In my installation the viewer was able to understand the dilemma of reconstructing history instead of knowing of or about it. In order to portray a historic totality, I came to the conclusion that history doesn’t sit side by side. I can only come to terms with this layering through my art practice. The problem is that history sometimes overlaps, sits on top of itself and sometimes unfolds in a non-linear fashion, which makes it logistically impossible on an intellectual level to represent. The exhibit opened up many questions.

One such question was, “How can the historical and material contingencies of race and class avoid perpetuating exclusionary voids within the overlapping, singular space of a multicultural society?” ^1.

Sunken Histories (monograph) – Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Centre A, 2003.

^{1. Jeremy Todd. The Recognition of Loss in Sunken Histories, 2003.}