Canadian master printmaker Anna Wong (1930-2013) was born and raised in Chinatown in Vancouver, BC. In her early twenties, Wong worked at her family’s business, Modernize Tailors. After studying Chinese brush painting in Hong Kong and graduating from the Vancouver School of Art with a degree in creative printmaking, she continued on to study and teach at the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City. In the 1960’s her original prints received several international prizes. She has represented Canada in a number of international print biennials, and was featured in a solo exhibition at the National Art Gallery of China in Beijing in 1979.

This exhibition features over seventy works of art by Anna Wong, including paintings, drawings, hand-pulled prints, and large-scale textile pieces. Wong’s artwork, made during a lifetime of travel and cultural influence from Vancouver’s Chinatown to New York City, and from Quadra Island to Beijing, resonates with Nanaimo Art Gallery‘s current programming inquiry What moves?

This travelling exhibition is funded in part by the City of Burnaby and the Government of Canada. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-colour publication in two bilingual editions (English/French/Chinese), with essays from notable scholars Keith Wallace and Zoë Chan.