Auspicious Moment 2020
Auspicious Moment 2020 proposed for the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen is re-imagined from a photography series called Fortune Teller (2017). Paper recycled from fashion magazines, cancer clinic literature, red lucky money envelopes, and self-portrait prints. Remnants of my medical journey undergoing breast cancer treatments for a year. The painful and arduous battle left scars, however I found strength and courage to fight cancer again when it relapsed in mid-2019. During the pandemic, I reworked these images in an animated video format suitable for the MPCAS submission. The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in BC was a constant reminder of how vulnerable my racialized and immune-compromised body was during the quarantine. Quarantine prompted me to create Auspicious Moment 2020, fortune tellers are contained inside a white circle, folding and unfolding, revealing a self-portrait, scarred body along with images from anti-aging adverts in magazines and red ‘lai-see’ labelled with the “Wu” symbol. The animated origami inside the white-washed background, open and close with quick movements, long enough for the viewers to see the symbolic images. The eight animated videos may represent a childhood game of chance, to tell a fortune, to change perceptions of personal trauma, to question the Asian diaspora in North America. To tell a specific story of hope and change through my perspective, of what it means to negotiate the tenuous and fragile environment we live in today.
Bio
Multi-media artist Kira Wu has participated in numerous art exhibitions and art conferences, including a solo exhibition at On Main Gallery curated by Paul Wong called Fold Unfold (2020) for Capture Photography Festival, Disfiguring Identity Symposium (Surrey Art Gallery, 2014), Re-dress Express (Centre A, Vancouver, 2007) and Interferences (Multi-media and Digital Art Festival in Belfort, France, 2000). Her work address autobiographical stories revolving around systemic racism, identity, gender and body politics. Wu currently teaches all levels in Photography, Advanced Open-Studio, Curatorial Studies, and Art Practice in the Community in the Fine Arts Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.