Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fond. Distance Makes the Heart Forget
2020-2021
Photographic billboard
AKA/PAVED Arts shared Billboard space
Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fond. Distance Makes the Heart Forget is a large photographic billboard seen above AKA. The piece takes the form of an intricate design of Chinese style clouds against the backdrop of the Treaty 6/Saskatoon sky.
The piece incorporates three influences: one, Saskatchewan’s provincial slogan “Land of the Living Skies”; two, the word ‘celestials, a term used towards early Chinese settlers in the 19th century; and three, the Empyrean, a heaven where celestial beings are made of pure light, and the source of light and creation live in paradise in the clouds.
The plural 'celestials,' referring to citizens of the Celestial Empire (天朝,an old name forChina) may have begun with American journalists searching for synonyms for East-Asian or Chinese.1Celestial appears as a commonly found term in the Saskatoon LocalHistory Library in newspaper and press clippings.The term became pejorative when it was used in a way to denote the foreignness of the people that it referenced.Given the inferior economic and legal status of Chinese settlers at the time, the belief that they were associated with the heavens was likely an absurd concept to most white settlers. As such, the term became derogatory through mockery. A 1913 article in Saskatoon Daily Star notes that the Chinese self-adopted this term as a mark of distinction but it“need not however be taken seriously.”
The term celestial is now old enough that most Chinese-Canadians now will be unfamiliar with it and the harmful intent it embodied. The term may not carry the sting it once did for Chinese communities. However, the knowledge of its existence and public unfamiliarity with its history elicits the question—how is pain and grief measured and felt across distances of time?