Raeann Kit-Yee Cheung was in Grade 9 when she moved to Canada from Hong Kong.

Now, 50 years later, she still feels like a foreigner.

“I was a small child and I recall trying to assimilate was very difficult,” said Kit-Yee Cheung.

She remembers the dreaded walk home from school, facing torment and bullying from neighbourhood kids.

In the wake of grief, after the loss of her mother, these childhood experiences of immigrating to Canada came flooding back.

“I was going through my grief and in my grieving, I thought about those early years when we first came to Canada,” said Kit-Yee Cheung.

“Along with all the grieving and all that, I was just kind of lamenting that experience and something sort of struck me to ask, ‘If it was so bad for me at that time, what was it like for the immigrants who came a hundred years before me?’”

This question sparked a deep dive into the stories of resilience, hardship and trauma amongst early Chinese immigrants that make up Kit-Yee Cheung’s exhibit “WE ARE IMMIGRANTS”.

The ongoing project began in 2020 with the collection of archival images and research on early immigrants. This eventually led to several interviews with people about their lived experiences and their families.

“About a year into the project, I started to get work out and exposed, and that’s how I managed to gather up some descendants of the Chinese immigrants and then from seeing that work, they wanted to participate and now, on an ongoing basis, I keep going back to them,” said Kit-Yee Cheung.

A consistent symbol throughout the series, Kit-Yee Cheung ties the colour yellow into the project using various mediums, like watercolour or yellow string.

“From a young age, I learned that Asians are labelled with yellow skin and when I tie that thought to my own experience as a yellow-skinned person in Canada, I couldn’t help but to somehow personify that symbol,” said Kit-Yee Cheung.

These alterations to the archival images – like adding a splash of watercolour – aim to personify the experiences of those represented in the photographs, according to Kit-Yee Cheung.

Kit-Yee Cheung tells the story of Wong Quai Lun through several images that incorporate yellow traditional Indigenous beadwork. Eventually settling in Longview, Alta., and running Barney’s Cafe out of their home, Wong Quai Lun and his family built relationships with the Indigenous community, trading goods out of the cafe.

The beadwork in the images of Wong Quai Lun and his family represents their relationship to the Indigenous community.

“Initially, the images were rather degrading; they were not happy symbols at all, but over time … I found ways to celebrate the symbol by using other images, and so it became more of a celebration rather than a lament,” she said.

Many of the stories unearthed by Kit-Yee Cheung highlight the legacies that Chinese immigrants left on their communities, families and the economy.

For Kit-Yee Cheung, these stories of early immigrants also brought new reflections into her own experience moving to Canada.

 “People talk about the struggle of identity a lot and to be honest with you, I didn’t even realize I had that struggle and having come to that realization made it easier for me to understand myself better and why I just feel like I don’t fit anywhere,” she said.

“Now I understand why and now I can actually feel the feeling without the judgment or that sort of thing … now I can live with the ambiguity rather than struggle with it.”

Alongside the displayed visuals, stories of the immigrants portrayed throughout the series can be found in the exhibit catalogue.

“It’s really important that people go and see images but also read the catalogue, connect with the artist through her website so they can actually read the stories of the individuals depicted in the photographs,” said Ash Slemming, curator of the exhibit.

“Raeann spent countless hours of research on these families that were impacted during the time of the railroads, settlers and racism towards Chinese immigrants.”

Kit-Yee Cheung hopes the series creates an opportunity to learn about Canadian history, while also pushing back against discrimination towards Chinese people.

“This project was my way of stimulating curiosity… while we may all be biased about something, perhaps by understanding that bias we may learn something else that we didn’t know before and perhaps that will chip away at the biases we carry with us day to day,” she said.

The exhibit is part of Alberta Foundation of the Arts Travelling Exhibition program (TREX) and is being circulated by the Alberta Society of Artists.

The gallery is on display at artsPlace until June 18.