Holly Chang

Stitching the story of Chinese Canadian Histories: Quilting as an Archival Medium and Research-Praxis (2021)

Stitching the story of Chinese Canadian Histories: Quilting as an Archival Medium and Research-Praxis develops new ways of retelling the stories of Chinese Canadians. This project retrieves photographic material and textual ephemera about Chinese Canadian history from Canadian archives and repurposes/recycles it in a series of quilts. In this project, histories, stories and photographic archives are placed within the space of five quilts. The space of the quilt challenged what we consider history, how we access it and how we can derive meaning through how we access textile media in domestic spaces. This project utilizes research-creation to present history in quilts that are accessible and tangible to Canadian communities and offers an opportunity to learn and engage with the gaps in our historical record.