Navigating Immigration: Chinese-Canadian Artist Raeann Kit-Yee Cheung Explores Identity and Heritage in Her New Exhibition

By Aimee Koristka, May 6, 2024—

Her dignified posture and warm expression greet me, although her soft smile does not fully reach her eyes. Her arms rest on her waist and her hands gently hold the handle of a translucent suitcase. The only items inside – five large goldfish with googly eyes – surprise me.

The woman staring at me is the mother of Raeann Kit-Yee Cheung, the artist behind TRUCK Contemporary Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, Pilot astronauts. Referring to the term “astronaut families,” Cheung’s exhibition examines the reality of “astronaut households,” where one family member, often the father, remains or returns in East Asia to maximize financial income, while the rest of the family remains in East Asia . North America. Represents her mother’s perspective from the 1970s to the 1990s. Pilot astronauts features a dazzling collection of photographs chronicling the experience of “astronaut mothers” – “pilots” with the responsibility of navigating both a new household and a new culture.

On the walls are photos of black-and-white household items that give you a glimpse into Cheung’s mother’s life: rubber gloves and Titan Carpenter’s Glue, tie-down screws and glass cleaner. In the achromatic grid of the instruments of women’s invisible labor, it can be difficult to pinpoint the person behind the chore of household maintenance. But at the heart of the exhibition, the pilot’s life outside her family duties becomes clear. She holds a screwdriver like it’s a lit cigarette, she wears cardigans as soft as tofu pudding and, as her suitcase suggests, she’s an animal lover.

“As a starting point for this series,” Cheung writes as part of the exhibition, “I remember a bazaar incident when mother insisted on bringing live goldfish back to Canada. It was a mind-boggling idea at the time, but in retrospect maybe she was longing to get home.”

It is here where Cheung most strikingly succeeds in her exhibition’s goal: locating and celebrating the strength and humanity of early astronaut mothers. While aspects of the exhibition are exceptionally explicit – frosted plexiglass hangs between photos with phrases like “Split Family / Solo Parenting / Foreign Culture” – the dizzying combination of buzzing gobo lights and blurry photos of goldfish forces you to wonder how astronaut mothers ever managed both their newfound loneliness as their freedom.

I hear another piece of evidence from the open doorway; energetic R&B. It’s a distracting attack on modern North American culture. It is invasive, isolating and unconditional; it’s creepy by theme.

Pilot astronauts is currently on view at TRUCK Contemporary Art Gallery’s Parkade Project Space until June 1, 2024. Admission to the exhibition is free and more information (including accessibility information) is available on the TRUCK Contemporary website. Cheung’s work—If we could meet again (2022) – next on display at the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Here now exhibition organized by the Royal Alberta Museum, opening April 17.