Façades

2020-2021
Electric lightbox, plexiglass, powder-coated aluminum

Conjuring images of changing streetscapes, Façades captures a combination of nostalgia, regret, and a sudden awareness of time—the feeling of not knowing that something is gone until it has disappeared and failing to remember what used to be there. Façades consists off our unmarked double-sided illuminated sign boxes. With words and information removed, formal and decorative elements of the signs are left behind, prompting associations and memories of the distantly familiar. The series functions as a line of unmarked urban tombstones and monuments, a question of what constitutes cultural space and heritage, and the subtext of linguistic messages.

Across the world, Chinatowns are changing and while they continue to serve as an urban marker of ethnically specific neighbourhoods, businesses and services are disappearing. While the use of Chinese text in storefront signage functions as welcoming markers for those who may find comfort in the clarity they provide, their presence has historically been met with mixed sentiments and outcomes. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as ethno-suburbs developed to accommodate growing newcomer communities, shopping centres and malls with non-English signage began to pop up in clusters. In Richmond, British Columbia, the City’s first Asian mall, Aberdeen Centre, was perceived as being unfriendly for non-Chinese due to its use of signage in only Chinese. Similar sentiments of antagonism grew in Markham, Ontario over rapidly developing Chinese shopping centres with a lack of English in their signage and advertising. In Washington D.C., a mandate for all businesses, Chinese and non-Chinese, in the area to carry Chinese shop signs was initiated. However, this effort did little to stall the displacement of Chinese residents from the neighbourhood.

The lack of text in Façades removes an obvious indicator of the sign’s intended audience as’ blank ambiguity leaves room to openly interpret whether something is coming or going. With the clarity of language removed, what is conveyed to the reader? What is lost through this omission? Similarly, what elements of language and sign propel understandings and sentiments of hospitality or intimidation?