A tree grows in Chinatown.| Photo by Vanessa Lowe.

The mural of an elderly Asian woman standing beside a car, with crows behind her, on the corner of Hastings and Jackson in Vancouver, is one of Vanessa Lowe’s well-known works. In her latest project A Tree Grows in Chinatown, Lowe uses text and old family photographs to tell a story of her mother’s earlier days of living in what is known today as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Chinatown area.

“I’m not sure if she would have liked it, but she would have been pleased with it and my doing it,” says Lowe about her exhibition A Tree Grows in Chinatown, which is on display from Dec. 12, 2015–Jan. 10, 2016, at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden.

A Tree Grows in Chinatown is a mixed media project dedicated to Lowe’s late mother and life in Chinatown during the 1960s. Choosing old photographs from her family’s albums, Lowe had them printed them onto silk canvas. She then superimposed text onto the photos to help explain and tell a story. The shape of the pieces is elongated, like scrolls, and the text, though written in English, reads right to left, up and down, much like traditional Chinese characters.

Lowe, 59, says she went through piles and piles of photos in order to find photos that fit her 2008 writing piece.

“It was quite mystifying because we were really a working class family and I don’t know how we managed to have this huge archive of photographs. If my mother was able to read and write better, she might have been a writer or archivist,” says Lowe.

Lowe’s parents were born in B.C., but her father was taken back to China and raised there before returning to Canada.

“I don’t know what generation I am. I don’t know how to qualify that,” explains Lowe, who doesn’t speak or write Mandarin Chinese, but has always been fascinated with certain Chinese cultural elements such as calligraphy.

“I’m not really either (Chinese or Canadian). Or maybe I’m both,” says Lowe.

Growing pains

Beautiful Daughter.| Photo by Vanessa Lowe.

Lowe says Vancouver was a very different scene back in the sixties; it was uncommon to see Chinese people out in the community.

“I was perceived like an immigrant even though I was not,” says Lowe, explaining there was a common belief that Chinese people were different from other Vancouverites.

Growing up, Lowe heard offensive and negative remarks such as “Chinky, Chinky Chinaman went downtown,” regarding her heritage.

“It was difficult having to hear that all the time. I was really shy and that kind of stuff doesn’t help you be less shy,” says Lowe.

Lowe says it was difficult to trust people, to make friends, but says eventually she was able to meet people who didn’t make such comments about her.

“Racism (now) is a weird, positive one- they say, ‘Chinese people are smart,’ or if you’re Chinese, they’ll ask you which Chinese restaurant to go to, like you would naturally know because you are Chinese,” says Lowe.

For Lowe, being Chinese or not Chinese is like being a specific gender.

She gives the example of being described as “that little Asian woman” – it’s a simplistic comment, what she calls the ‘short-hand.’

“For white people, their ethnicity gets to be invisible. Unless they’re in a community where they really stick out, they (usually) get a more descriptive version: ‘the blond guy, tall, with glasses’,” says Lowe.

Lowe says a lot of figuring out one’s identity is to confront the ‘short-hand.’

“If you’re that person being described, you’re going to fight against it,” she says.

Growing trees

Good Mother.| Photo by Vanessa Lowe.

“I’ve always been aware of art as a way of how people expressed themselves and as a way for me to express myself,” says Lowe, who started practicing art 20 years ago.

Inspired by the American book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Lowe found many similarities between her mother and the novel’s female protagonist, a girl who becomes a woman during the First World War. The story parallels the one of Lowe’s mother, who grew up during the Second World War. Lowe says these stories about growing up in inner cities, about working class or struggling people and immigrants are a part of an ‘outsider’ world.

“Trees are important,” says Lowe. “They are a symbol of people growing, and it’s true in Chinatown. My story of this little tree growing in Chinatown- they’ll take root wherever they take root. People can just grow regardless of where they are planted.”

For more information, please visit www.vancouverchinesegarden.com or www.thiscassandra.com.