Presented by Linda Zhang, Assistant Professor at Ryerson’s School of Interior Design (RSID) at the Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD), along with a class of fourth-year RSID students, this immersive and interactive project seeks to identify Chinatown’s future heritage(s) through the affects produced by interior architecture, lived experience, collective storytelling, atmosphere, and memory. Through a conceptual digital exhibition, we seek to uncover untold stories and build a collective, intersectional vision for the future heritage(s) of Toronto’s Chinatowns. Each of the projects featured in ChinaTOwn explores what marginalized communities have known for some time—namely, that all that is written is not necessarily all that is, and what is remembered extends far beyond what is recorded. ChinaTOwn tells the forgotten stories, willful omissions, and accumulation of silences that exist beyond Toronto’s official heritage definition of its Chinatown neighbourhoods. The project aims to put personal stories and individual memory in conversation with state-sanctioned narratives. Join us for the exhibition launch event to hear from the artist and designers themselves and delve deeper into the histories and ideas behind their projects.
