Chun Hua C. Dong at Articule, Montreal

11/01/2024

Solo Exhibition: I Wonder How I Wonder Why
Gallery: articule
Address: 6282 St-Hubert,Montréal, Québec, Canada
H2S 2M2
Date: November 1 – December 14, 2024
Opening reception: November 1, 5-8pm

Dong transforms a scientific laboratory into an imaginative stage where the boundaries of gender, power, and social control are redefined. Through a blend of video, animation, light, AI, 3D-printed sculptures, and ready-made objects, Dong combines elements of scientific presentation with childhood memories, creating an immersive, sensory-rich experience both experimental and personal.

Drawing on early encounters with Western culture while growing up in China, Dong uses the song “Lemon Tree”, by the German band Fool’s Garden, as a symbolic, aspirational fantasy of Western life: bright, carefree, and filled with promise. For Dong, this fantasy was shaped through cultural exports like music, media, and fashion, offering an idealized, unattainable version of the West. In this project, Dong bridges the gap between the imagined promises of Western life and the complex realities of growing up in the East, transforming bittersweet childhood memoirs into acts of resistance and empowerment.

Dong uses the laboratory as a metaphorical site where fantasies are deconstructed, reassembled, and transformed. The lab becomes a space of transformation – not simply for scientific experimentation, but for challenging cultural constructs, reimagining identity, and crossing geographic and ideological boundaries. “I Wonder How I Wonder Why” is a space where East and West, science and imagination, reality and fantasy intersect, inviting reflection on how personal and cultural narratives shape our understanding of ourselves and the world, and how these narratives can open new possibilities for self-expression.