Paul Wong

Chinaman's Peak is the name of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies; Walking The Mountain (Hanng San in Cantonese) refers to the beliefs and rituals associated with ancestral worship that continue to be an important part of contemporary Chinese culture. They provide continuity between the past, the present and the future; between the living and the spirit world.

This installation by Vancouver artist Paul Wong honours specifically the spirits of the Chinese pioneers, the railway workers in the late 1800s, the miners at the turn of the century, the sojourner Hoy Ming Wong (1896–1968), and the suicides of Kenneth Fletcher (1954–1978) and Paul Speed (1967–1991). It unites seemingly isolated people through the communal act of remembering.

The 26-minute video around which the installation is built evolved from a performance commissioned and exhibited by the Walter Phillips Gallery in 1992, and produced with the assistance of the Television and Video Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Co-curated by Keith Wallace and Sylvie Gilbert