Main Gallery:
On the Menu
Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Kev Liang, and Xiao Han
Curator: Emily Nestor
January 25 – March 22 | 2025
Opening Reception: January 25, 2025 | 7PM
Whether a quiet weekday lunch, a late night take out, or a celebratory dinner, Chinese restaurants are embedded in a socio-cultural fabric as a consistent and ongoing space to find nourishment and gathering. It is in the moment of gathering that we find the time to connect, to commune, and to care. On the Menu utilises personal, familial and communal histories of Chinese restaurants, the people that own and operate them, and the communities that exist within them as a means to challenge the perspective of hierarchical understandings of labour and to celebrate community care. Within backdrops of Chinese restaurants Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Kev Liang, and Xiao Han invite viewers into the repetitive acts of restaurant kitchens, the intimate moments shared between families, and intergenerational memories that weave together a community spirit as a means to explore the connecting lines of displacement, gathering, migration, and community.
🔮 Snack Witch Joni Cheung 🍡 is a grateful, uninvited guest born—and knows she wants to die—on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Stó:lō, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh peoples. They are a Certified Sculpture Witch with an MFA from Concordia University (2023). As a wicked #magicalgirl ✨ who eats art + makes snacks, she has exhibited across Turtle Island and beyond. Currently, they are based on the stolen lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka peoples, working as a part-time lecturer in the Design and Computation Arts Department at Concordia University.
Aside from art-making, Joni likes wandering down grocery store aisles + drinking bubble tea. 🧋
Instagram: @snackwitch
Image: bring back as souvenirs, Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Screen-printed “good morning towels”, clothesline, clips, plastic wash bins, and video. 2019 – Ongoing (Photo Credit: 2024, Danny Luong, The New Gallery)”
Kev Liang (he/him) is an emerging artist based in Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory, with a BFA in Printmaking and Intermedia with Distinction from the University of Alberta. Kev has exhibited at SNAP Gallery, Latitude 53, Art Museum at the University of Toronto for the 2021 BMO 1st! Art award, and more. He tackles his homo/queer, diasporic 2nd-gen Chinese-Canadian identity and its existential anxieties of lineage and prosperity within the Anthropocene. Kev was a Production Assistant for The Works International Visual Arts Society, a Gallery Intern for Latitude 53, as well as a Gallery Attendant for Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre. Recently, he has been interested and involved in community-based artistic projects concerning Edmonton’s Chinatown such as Chinatown Greetings and AIYA Collective and will continue to seek opportunities to contribute towards our own communities as well as expand artistically elsewhere.
Kev Liang（他）是一位新興藝術家，目前居住在艾德蒙頓，位於第六條條約領土，在阿爾伯塔藝術大學以優異成績獲得版畫和跨媒體藝術學士學位。Kev的作品曾在SNAP畫廊、Latitude 53、多倫多大學藝術博物館（2021年BMO 1st！藝術獎）等地展出作品。他探索自己的同性戀/酷兒、移民二代華裔加拿大人的身份，並關註人類世中血統和繁榮的存在焦慮。Kev曾擔任The Works International Visual Arts Society的製片助理，Latitude 53的畫廊實習生，以及Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre的畫廊管理員。最近，他對以藝術為基礎的社區項目產生了興趣並參與其中，這些項目涉及艾德蒙頓的唐人街，如Chinatown Greetings 和 AIYA Collective，並將繼續尋求機會在我們自己的社區做出貢獻，並在其他地方進行藝術拓展。
Instagram: hiimkev
Image: Just add oil; I feel cold. Kev Liang, Photo-lithography on Mitsumata, 31×21.25in, 2022 (Photo Credit: Kev Liang)
Artist/Curator/Mother
Xiao Han is a multidisciplinary artist and curator from Wuhan, China. Based in Saskatoon, the 6 Territory- traditional land of Indigenous and Metis, Han’s creative practice focuses on photography, lens-based performance, visualizing emotion, and community engagement. Han’s research explores diaspora identity, contemporary gender issues, and the relationship between humans, the environment, and the indigenous land. Through visual art and curatorial practice, Han produced numerous projects investigating the Chinese Canadian restaurant history, the identity of home, and the aesthetic of community relationships.
Image: Xiao Han, OK Cafe Exterior Wall, 2024
- Gold Mountain Restaurant (2002-2017); An Installation by Karen Tam
- Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada by Lily Cho
- Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants by Ann Hui
- Chinatown Gates: Monuments Towards Decolonial Relationalities, by Lee Rayne Lucke
- WOK HEI, OIL COUNTRY, + A BLUE CHINATOWN – by Lee Rayne Lucke
- Adult Sweetness by Snack Witch Joni Cheung, (2023)
- to be held in two hands, Sonali Menezes & Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Exhibition Response by Alana MacDougall
- bring back as souvenirs by Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Exhibition Response: dear good morning towel by Steph Wong Ken
