Canto Cutie - Volume 2

Peachtree Plaza is a large monoprint on canvas and was born from
abstracted personal photographs taken at a local Chinese mall. Familiar
Cantonese iconography, like the BBQ roast duck, is abstracted to serve as
a formal device. The printed layers of abstraction are a metaphor of the
multicultural society while the materiality of the canvas and the cuts
throughout reveal the the instability and violence that people of colour
experience. Microaggressions have o!en been described as ‘death by a
thousand cuts’ and these cuts are exercised onto the canvas to juxtapose
the colourful and appealing elements of the canvas surface.
About Karen Kar Yen Law
My practice oscillates between painting and printmaking processes.
Through the language of multiples, gradients, layering, masking, and
mark-making, I reproduce cultural iconography to imagine and explore
my relationship with the Chinese diaspora and with Canadian culture. I
am a first-generation, Cantonese speaking settler, and use my practice to
design a lexicon which describes experiences of multiculturalism,
assimilation, and polite racism in Canada. As I blend, layer, and cover-up
colour and form in my works, these same operations exist and occur on
the daily in the experiences of people living in Canada. The product of my
artistic practice is artwork delightful in colour and presented to be
palatable, to invite even the most unsuspecting viewer into a discourse
on racialized experiences in Canada.
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