Chun Hua Catherine Dong

Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Canadian Intermedia artist. Dong’s artistic practice is based in performance art, photography, video, installation, virtuality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D printing within the contemporary context of global feminism.

Dong started their artistic career as a performance artist in 2009. Dong uses the body—often their own body— as a primary material to activate social commentary on gender, identity, and immigration. In Later 2019, Dong focuses on art and technology, exploring new digital possibilities for bridging gaps between memories and experiences, whilst mediating culture and identity through the lens of gender and diaspora. listed the “10 Artists Who Are Reinventing History” by Canadian Art in 2017, and was named "The Artist of the Year" at the DongGang International Photo Festival in South Korea in 2018. Dong was also a finalist for the Contemporary Art Award at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Prix en art actuel du MNBAQ) 2020, and awarded with the Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts Award by the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2021. In 2024, Dong was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award, a Canadian contemporary art prize.

Selected exhibitions Dong has exhibited their works at The International Digital Art Biennial Montreal (BIAN), MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image, Quebec City Biennial, Kaunas Biennial, The Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne in France, Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, The Aine Art Museum in Tornio, Bury Art Museum in Manchester, Museo de la Cancillería in Mexico City, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, DongGong Museum of Photograph in South Korea, He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, Hubei Museum of Fine Art in Wuhan, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Varley Art Gallery of Markham, and elsewhere.

Each time Dong travels to a new place, Dong creates a duvet with Chinese traditional fabric. Covered by the duvet, Dong lies on the ground in front of historical sites, landmarks, tourist attractions, and other significant places or events around the world. Dong repeats this performance as a poetic expression of their diasporic identity and engagement with different cultures and spaces. As a performance artist, Dong uses their body as a primary material in their work, creating visual narratives that enable audiences to experience performance unexpectedly and directly in public spaces.

Meet Me Halfway is a multi-channel VR video installation that explores the perception of time and space in virtual reality (VR) and the inability to return to the present from searching the inner world. Dong brought their new passion toward abstraction and their vivid childhood memories into virtual space, creating imaginary worlds that can be experienced both in virtual and in real life. The inner worlds Dong created in VR shifts between concrete and ephemeral, abstract and realistic, 3D to 2D, organic and inorganic with speed, forming temporary structures that constantly expand and collapse in time and space.

Mother (2017) Source:

“Mother” consists of 14 photographs and a video dedicating to Dong’s absent mother. Absence is a form of presence. Following the death of Dong's mother, Dong returned to China, the country of their birth. Dong found 14 mothers who are close friends and relatives of Dong's mother. Dong bought each mother a pair of floral embroidered traditional Chinese shoes as a gift because Dong mother loved the floral embroidered shoes.

Husbands and I (2009 -2011) Sources:

"Husbands and I" is a performance wherein Dong navigates her own relationship to Western culture through one-minute and one-day relationships with white men. Dong started the "Husbands and I" performance in 2009 in Vancouver, where Dong wore a traditional Chinese dress and asked white males on streets to have photo taken with her by suggesting them to be her husbands for a minute. Dong has had photos with 325 men. In 2010, Dong posted classified advertisements describing herself as "an exotic, compliant and artistic Asian girl looking for a white husband who would like to take her to his home to live with him for a day as his mail order bride". Dong recorded videos of her experiences living for one day with each ad respondent. Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Varley Art Gallery of Markham, Markham, Canada, 2022 At the Edge of Two World, TRUCK Contemporary, Calgary, Canada, 2022 Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Canada, 2021 Meet Me Halfway, la Central Galerie Powerhouse, Montreal, Canada, 2021 Age of Love, DongGang Museum of Photography, DongGang International Photo Festival, Korea, 2018 To Rebel is Justified, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), Montréal, Canada, 2015 Visual Poetics of Embodied Shame, Hamilton Artists Inc. Hamilton, Canada, 2015 Between Reality and Transcendence, Articule | Artist Run Centre, Montreal, Canada, 2014

Selected group exhibition and performance METAMORPHOSIS – MUTATION, The International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN), Montreal, Canada, 2022 Skin Deep, Nuit Blanch Toronto, the North York Centre, commissioned by the City of Toronto, Canada, 2022 Art Me!, Galerie Charlot, Paris, France, 2022 Now You See Me, Doris McCathy Gallery, Contact Photograph Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2022 Descendance, SPAO Centre, Ottawa, Canada, 2022 The 4th Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2021 The Misfits, Capture Photography Festival, presented by Richmond Art Gallery (Public Art)), Vancouver, Canada, 2021 I Have Been There, CAFKA Biennial – Contemporary Art in Public Space, Kitchener, Canada (Public Art), 2021 Physis: Production of Nature, Human and Technology, HuBei Museum of Fine Art, WuHan, China, 2021 Human Learning. What Machines Teach Us. Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, Paris, France, 2021 The Life of Thing, MOMENTA |Biennale de I’image, Galerie de I’ UQAM, Montreal, Canada, 2019 The Art of Joy, Manif d’art 8, Quebec City Biennial, Quebec City, Canada, 2017 Canada: Day 1, Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, Halifax, Canada, 2017 Far and Near: The Distances Between us, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 2017 Mother Tongue, Varley Art Gallery of Markham, Markham, Canada, 2017 A Very Thin Line, The CERA Project, London, UK, 2016 The Arrival, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto, Canada, 2016 Through the Body, CONTACT Photography Festival, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 2014 UNITEXT, Kaunas Biennial, National Museum of M. K. Čiurlionis, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2013