Hu Hang, co-owner of Art Flow, a new gallery on Somerset Street, admires the collection.
Walking west, down Somerset Street, you pass phõ restaurants, sushi, dim sum and Chinese restaurants – all signs that you’ve arrived in Chinatown. But beyond the cuisine establishments, down a flight of stairs, in an office building shared by an insurance company and apartments, there’s an art gallery – the first of its kind in Chinatown.
Yi Chang, co-owner of The Art Flow Gallery on Somerset Street, which opened March 6, hopes to show Ottawa that there is more to Asian culture than different edible delights.
“I want to let people know about Chinese culture through the art, through the painting, through the drawing, to let people know that Chinese culture is not 100 years behind,” says Chang.
The City of Ottawa's efforts to showcase Chinese culture include the completion of the Chinatown Royal Arch last October – a project that Chang says is helping to popularize the area. But she says there is still a ways to go in terms of culture.
Opening the gallery in Chinatown is a great opportunity to bring something different to the area, something new rather than another Chinese food restaurant, says Chang.
The gallery, itself, is small. The low-hanging ceiling and exposed pipes are all painted white to match the walls, making the artwork stand out as you circulate the room.
It’s all about using the space efficiently, so that the paintings are the focus of attention, says Chang. Attention is a key motivation Chang and her family had when deciding to open the gallery.
“It’s hard to find a gallery to show Chinese paintings,” says Chang. “Most of the gallery owners open galleries to make money, and if they don’t think they have a market, they don’t do it.”
But lack of a market doesn’t seem to be a problem. There are many people interested in owning and collecting Asian art but can only find prints, says Chang.
Less than a week after their opening, the Art Flow Gallery owners already sold a few paintings – a good thing for both the public and the artists.
“We want artists to make some money from this too,” says Chang. Instead of taking larger percentages of the selling price, which could be as high as 50 per cent at some galleries, the Art Flow Gallery only takes 30 per cent.
“I am an artist. I know the feeling. That’s why we want to give artists more per cent for their work,” says Chang, who immigrated to Canada in 1991 with her mother, father and sister.
As a family, they have always been close. The father, Gueyuan Chang, and mother, Hu Hang, are both artists who taught their daughters to paint when they were young.
Their artistic inspiration was another reason why Chang and her mother thought they should open the gallery.
“This is a place for (my parents) to meet more different artists.”
During the opening-day festivities, there were more than 200 people in the little space. The crowd included Canadian senators, representatives from the Chinese Embassy and many, many artists, says Chang.
“In this show, we have lots (of artists) from different cultures – Chinese, Indians, some Spanish,” says Chang.
But what’s unique is that these artists, with their ethnic diversity, are painting Chinese art.
Some artists create their work in more traditional ways, using rice paper and silk, others do pencil sketches. There are even pieces by two Canadian women who do calligraphy.
“When I first came to Canada, and people were talking about the Chinese, they were always thinking the restaurants, that’s all they were thinking. So I would say ‘no, no, no, it’s not just the restaurants,’” says Chang.
In the future, she hopes to bring in traditional Chinese clothing and crafts to further emphasize the vastness of the culture, says Chang.
What’s important is that the community understands that there is more to the culture than what comes on a plate.