2033 Essex Rd
Exhibition by Snack Witch Joni Cheung 張文懿
OPENING DATE : SEPTEMBER 5 2025 5-9 PM
EXHIBITION RUN: SEPTEMBER 5 – OCTOBER 24 2025
Translator: Christina Yao
Exhibition Title: 2033 Essex Rd
Artist Statement:
Through an interdisciplinary artistic practice, I investigate the interdependent relationship between objects, place, and identity. As a Canadian-born Hong Kong-Chinese queer, anglophone woman, I use this lens to navigate discourses of transnationalism, migration, displacement, and diasporas.
Growing up tirelessly grasping at my language ∴ culture, I soothed my hunger for connection via online communication/sharing platforms and by eating. These ingredients helped a hopeful pessimist calm rolling waves of loneliness and learn about their heritage and ancestry. Sifting through family memories of displacement—usually in-between conversations held over food-covered tables—and prickly experiences of trying to blend in until smooth, nourish points of interest to reflect and respond to global contexts and (hi)stories.
Conducting research is a ritual that molds the way I work. Chewing on the spectrum of transparency ↔ opacity and translation of forms (physical ↔ digital) and stories, I collect and layer still and moving images from archives and contemporary media, words, sound(scapes), objects, and places. This research simmers into installations conjured up with sculptures, performances, texts, audio explorations, photographs, and videos—marinating and transforming accumulated ephemera often overlooked by those outside of my communities. As of late, I have been using food and humour to draw people in with the familiar, to confront the uncomfortable histories embedded in the everyday.
通過跨學科的藝術實踐，我探討物件、場所與身份之間的相互依存關繫。作爲一名出生於加拿大的香港華裔酷兒女性、以英語爲母語的創作者，我以此視角切入，思考跨國主義、移民、流離失所與離散等議題。
在成長過程中，我不厭其煩地追尋語言與文化的歸屬。通過在線交流/分享平颱和飲食來緩解對聯結的渴望。這些“配料”幫助一個懷抱希望的悲觀主義者平息孤獨的浪潮，並了解自己的血脈與祖先。在滿桌食物旁的對話縫隙中，我細細翻揀那些關於流離的家族記憶，以及那些爲融入而磨平稜角的刺痛經曆；這些成爲我思索與回應當代世界脈絡與（曆史）故事的養分。
進行研究已經成爲我的一種慣例，塑造着我的工作方式。我反複咀嚼透明與不透明、形式（實體↔數字）與敘事之間的轉換，在這一過程中，我從檔案和當代媒體中收集並疊加靜態與動態影像、文字、聲音（聲景）、物品與場所。這些研究通過雕塑、表演、文本、聲音探索、攝影與影像在裝置中慢燉熬出層次與質感，將那些由我所屬社群以外的人常常忽略的零散碎片醃漬、轉化。近來，我開始以食物與幽默爲媒介，在熟悉中製造親近，也引人直麵日常中埋藏的沉重曆史。
🍵🌶️🥭🍲🥟🥘🍦🍰🍍
Artist Biography:
🔮 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). She holds a BFA with Distinction in Visual Art (2018) from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. As a wicked #magicalgirl ✨ who eats art and makes snacks, she has exhibited and curated shows, off- and online, across Turtle Island and beyond. Currently, they are based on the stolen lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka and Mi’kmaq peoples, working under precarious conditions as a sessional professor at Concordia University and NSCAD University.
They have received support from various funding bodies, including the British Columbia Arts Council; Canada Council for the Arts; and Concordia University.
Aside from art-making, Joni likes wandering down grocery store aisles and drinking bubble tea. 🧋
零食女巫 Joni Cheung 是一位感恩的、不請自來的客人，出生於、並決定未來也將死於 xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Stó:lō, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh 原住民未割讓的土地上。Joni是獲得康考迪亞大學雕塑藝術碩士學位（2023）的認證女巫，並以優異成績取得西門菲莎大學當代藝術學院的視覺藝術學士學位（2018）。作為一個調皮的 #魔法少女 ，Joni以藝術為食、以零食創作，曾在龜島（Turtle Island）及其他地區策劃和展出作品，包括線上與線下展覽。目前, Joni常駐在 Kanien’kehá:ka 和Mi’kmaq 原住民被盜的土地上, 以臨時講師的身份在康考迪亞大學與 NSCAD 大學任教。
Joni的創作得到了多家資助機構的支持，包括英屬哥倫比亞藝術委員會、加拿大藝術委員會和康考迪大學。
除了藝術創作，Joni還喜歡在雜貨店的過道上閑逛和喝珍珠奶茶。
Exhibition Statement:
Snack Witch’s exhibition, 2033 Essex Rd, is a conjuring of sculptures, videos, and participatory works inspired by everyday interactions with family, friends, and those they have yet to meet.
In grocery stores, restaurants, small apartments, and virtual kitchens, Snack Witch often finds themselves reflecting on the intimate relationships and complicated histories embedded within objects used to care for those that surround her: people, ancestors, and the more-than-human.
How do the ways we intersect paths with others—across, around, and between various timescales and spaces—reflect the things we value as individuals and as members of various communities?
What are the types of labour historically performed by Chinese-Canadian communities and how has this work changed through time?
How does the history of migration and Canadian labour/immigration policies shape perspectives and understandings around ideas of migrants and the act of displacement, especially on stolen Indigenous land?
This gathering of works is an offering to those who feel lost and overwhelmed in our current realities. Together, they hope you will dream with her about the ways small acts of care can become rituals of refusal and remembrance: actions that honour slowing down; making space to sit with and converse with past, present, and future; a place to reenact knowledge passed down or forgotten…
零食女巫的展覽2033 Essex Rd是一場融合雕塑、視頻與互動作品的藝術呈現，靈感源自與家人、朋友以及尚未相遇之人們日常互動的點滴。
在雜貨店、餐館、小公寓與虛擬廚房中，零食女巫常常反思那些用於照顧她週圍的人、祖先以及超越人類的存在的物品中所蘊含的親密關繫和複雜曆史。
我們與他人在不同時間尺度與空間中相遇、交匯的方式，如何映照出我們作爲個體及群體成員所珍視的價值？
華裔加拿大社群在曆史上曾從事過哪些類型的勞作？這些工作隨着時間經曆了怎樣的轉變？
遷徙曆史與加拿大勞工／移民政策，如何形塑遷移者與流離這一行爲的觀點與理解
——尤其是在被掠奪的原住民土地上？
這繫列作品是獻給那些在當前現實中感到迷失和不知所措的人們。它們希望與您共同暢想：微小的關懷之舉如何轉化爲拒絶與記憶的儀式——這些行動緻敬放慢腳步；爲與過去、現在和未來留出對話空間；和一個重現被傳承或遺忘的知識的地方…
About aceartinc.: We are an artist-run centre dedicated to the support, exhibition, and dissemination of contemporary art. aceartinc. Presents five major exhibitions a year by contemporary visual artists. www.aceart.org
We are on Treaty 1 Territory. On the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. We offer our respect and gratitude to the caretakers of this land.
