VANCOUVER, CANADA.- When Reverse Chinatown: Those Who Pass Through opens at CICA Vancouver on February 26, 2026, it will mark more than the arrival of a traveling exhibition. For co-curator Xitong (Molly) Zhang, the Vancouver presentation is not a continuation of the New York iteration—it is a parallel unfolding.
“Presenting Reverse Chinatown in Vancouver is not a simple extension of the New York exhibition,” Zhang explains. “The two cities have distinct immigration histories and community structures. Even when we begin with the same premise, the responses that emerge are naturally different.” Originally initiated by DeCA (Dawn Eleven Contemporary Art Foundation) in New York in December 2025, Reverse Chinatown reflects Zhang’s ongoing commitment to building cross-city dialogue through institutional collaboration.
That sensitivity to place—its histories, tensions, and layered identities—has become central to Zhang’s curatorial approach. Working in collaboration with DeCA (Dawn Eleven Contemporary Art Foundation) and CICA Vancouver, Zhang brings together artists from Vancouver and New York to reconsider what “Chinatown” has meant historically, and what it might become.
For Zhang, Chinatown is not merely a geographic enclave. “Chinatown is not just a physical neighborhood,” she says. “It is a cultural field that is continually projected onto, imagined, and rewritten. It carries the memories of intergenerational migration, while also reflecting what is visible and invisible within contemporary structures.”
This conceptual framing shapes the exhibition’s structure. Rather than presenting Chinatown as a fixed symbol of heritage or nostalgia, Reverse Chinatown treats it as a process—something constantly reshaped by migration, policy, imagination, and lived experience.
The exhibition foregrounds how identity is continuously negotiated and reconfigured through the lived experiences of participating artists. One example is Irfan Hendrian’s work, which examines architectural details linked to Chinese history in the Indonesian context. Through low-relief sculptures of ornamental iron window grilles and doors, alongside video research on high-rise apartment buildings, Hendrian reveals how historical segregation targeting Chinese communities became embedded within everyday spaces.
“In his work,” Zhang notes, “decorative patterns that may initially seem familiar are no longer simply cultural motifs. They become traces where history and identity intersect.” The ordinary façade becomes an archive of structural exclusion.
Karis Huang’s paintings offer a more intimate lens. Drawing on visual elements associated with Chinese cultural symbolism—such as Jingdezhen porcelain—Huang transforms these forms into metaphors for identity translation and cultural repositioning. Once displaced from their original context, these motifs cease to function as singular emblems of tradition; instead, they become fluid markers of evolving identities.
For Zhang, this shift—from fixed symbol to moving signifier—is key to understanding diaspora. Identity is not inherited intact; it is negotiated across geography, language, and time.
The Vancouver iteration of Reverse Chinatown also expands through an open call, inviting local artists into the conversation. Janie Gao’s installation 米 mǐ| uncooked rice centers on uncooked rice as its primary medium, juxtaposing family immigration history with the contemporary art system. Gao references her family’s experience operating a takeout restaurant in the United States during the 1990s. The dining table was both the site of economic survival and the space of her childhood education.
Within the installation, bowls of varying sizes hold different quantities of rice, corresponding to representation ratios within the art world. Questions of resource distribution—who is seen, who is overlooked—become materially visible.
“Rice, as a staple,” Zhang reflects, “symbolizes both survival and structures that remain undigested.” The metaphor is quiet but direct.
Another collaborative work, The Weight of Leaving by Guangyuan (Sam) Xing and Diego Qi, revisits the nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant “bundle.” Rather than presenting it nostalgically, the artists treat the bundle as a folded archive—carrying personal memory while reflecting systemic constraints during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
“For me, the work is not simply about looking back,” Zhang says. “It is about reconsidering the weight of ‘leaving’ in our present context.” Through the repeated act of folding canvas, the artists respond to their own experiences of living abroad—the struggle for belonging, the cost of departure, and the resilience required to begin again.
The bundles, stacked like firewood and dispersed throughout the gallery, appear separate yet interconnected. They mirror the dispersal and entanglement of migration routes while pointing to solidarity within diasporic communities.
The exhibition also includes the participation of Professor Shengtian Zheng, an influential scholar and curator who has long been active in both Chinese and American art circles. His presence bridges generations, offering historical depth while supporting younger artists navigating contemporary global contexts.
For Zhang, this intergenerational dialogue is essential. Curating is not simply about assembling artworks—it is about constructing conversations across time.
In a city like Vancouver, profoundly shaped by immigration, Reverse Chinatown does not attempt to define Chinatown definitively. Instead, it presents identity as fluid and negotiated. New York and Vancouver stand in parallel, responding to one another across difference. Zhang’s curatorial voice is measured yet precise. She resists spectacle in favor of structure; rather than imposing a single thesis, she creates space for layered interpretation. Chinatown, in her framing, becomes less a place to be preserved than a question to be asked.
As Reverse Chinatown opens this spring, Zhang invites viewers to slow down and look carefully—at architecture, at objects, at materials that might otherwise seem familiar. In doing so, she proposes that cultural landscapes are not built solely by buildings or heritage markers, but by people moving through them, generation after generation.
Through this exhibition, Xitong (Molly) Zhang does not offer answers about what Chinatown is. Instead, she reframes it as an evolving dialogue—one that continues to unfold across cities, histories, and lived experience.
