with Naomi Frost, Rémy Chhem, Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham, and Marie-Ève Samson
English
This vernissage event and roundtable discussion, a collaboration between the Super Boat People Collective, COHDS, and Concordia University Library, introduces and celebrates the launch of the “What Travels Through Us: Exhibition,” on display at Concordia University Library from September 12 until December 12, 2024.
The Super Boat People Collective is happy to present the exhibition born from the project “What Travels Through Us: Family History Workshops.” From Fall 2023 to Spring 2024, the project brought together a cohort of fifteen participants of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese descent, whose families were affected by war and exile. Organized in the form of sharing and creation circles, these workshops encouraged participants to delve into the layers of their family histories, often fragmented and intricate. In each session, guided by a documentarist or an artist of Asian descent who incorporated these experiences into their practice, participants explored a variety of mediums and approaches.
This community art exhibition is the imperfect culmination of the cohort’s reflections, sharing and work. For most of the participants, this is the first time that they have created such work, and for a general public. Artworks, everyday objects, crafts, interview extracts, personal notes, archives blend together within a setting that echoes domestic spaces, to evoke the character both familiar and strange of each person’s family past. These are candid, magnificent and touching works, slowly thought out and shaped. They speak, among other things, of attachment, filiation, memory, silence, absence, gift, gratitude, departure and discovery. We also aimed to highlight the calming and restorative power of the group, along with the collaborative essence of the entire process.
The vernissage and round-table event delves deeper into the process of the workshops, the community and family memory work of participants, as well as the collaborative process of taking this public through the exhibition. The roundtable discussion will center on the transmission of family histories and memory in the context of exile, and how oral history, the arts and family histories intersect in the process of memory work. The participants and co-curators will also introduce the exhibit and the works, the process of their creation.
Naomi Frost is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Concordia University. She completed her MA in history at Monash University in Melbourne, where she served on the committee for Oral History Victoria. Her research centers on the oral histories of 1.5 and second-generation Cambodian Australians, Canadians and Americans who grew up in the diaspora, intergenerational memory and family storytelling. She was appointed as Concordia University Library’s Researcher-in-Residence (2023-2024) and is a research assistant for the project Cemetery as Metaphor: An Oral History of Montreal’s Back River Memorial Gardens.
Rémy Chhem is a social scientist specializing in the governance and management of natural resources in the Mekong region and within indigenous contexts. In his free time, Rémy acts as a community organizer for Asian diasporas in Montreal. As the co-founder of the Super Boat People Collective, he is dedicated to developing dynamic projects that build connections, foster collaboration, and encourage dialogue and cultural continuity between communities and across generations. His current work seeks to understand and frame the experiences of boat people refugees beyond the good and grateful refugee trope.
Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham is a multidisciplinary artist with a degree in Art History & Visual Arts from Concordia University. In all her projects, whether as co-founder of Atelier La Coulée, as a member of the feminist zine collective Les Bêtes d’hier or as a cultural mediator in various community projects, it’s important to her to make space for voices that are too often marginalized, by focusing on personal and collective narratives that challenges dominant discourses. Her personal work deals with confluent identities and the complexities of cultural transmission in diasporic contexts.
Marie-Ève Samson is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. Her research centers on the experiences of ageing, end-of-life and care for immigrant elderly and their caregivers, particularly in the context where Quebec’s social protection and healthcare systems are facing significant change. Co-founder of Super Boat People, she was also involved in the Montreal Life Stories project in the early 2010s. Her thesis is informed by these various engagements and focuses more specifically on intergenerational issues in elder care within families of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian origin in Montreal.
Super Boat People is a collective dedicated to mobilizing Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese individuals in Quebec, encouraging them to reclaim their histories, reconnect with their culture and communities, ensure fair representation, and defend and promote the interests of immigrants and refugees. To this end, the collective develops various initiatives, focused on community and family history, literature, social mobilization, urban agriculture and cooking.
REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 45 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
