December 6th 2023 – February 22nd 2024, Massy Arts will host, Roots of Fate, a window installation by Vancouver-based emerging visual artist Sunsun Liu.

Exhibited in one of the building’s windows, the installation wishes to celebrate cultural diversity, and the importance of heritage/tradition. Liu says:

My photography is a reflection of my curiosity about beliefs, ideals, oral stories, and their relationship to culture and tradition. I’m interested in building a connection with those concepts and people who are unfamiliar with them as a way to celebrate the exchange of culture.

I’m often inspired by my personal experience of living with a mixture of four cultures: Thai, Taiwanese, English, and Canadian. My images range from the traces of culture in mundane life to a digital collage about the relationship of people through the concept of fortune telling.

I strive to use photography to display a common ground, where the context of imagination and the medium that captures the material world as images, merge. Roots of Fate is inspired by palm reading and its concept of predicting one’s future solely by the lines on their palms.

This digital collage visually showcases the lines that flow from one person’s palm to another: reflecting how we are all connected to each other regardless of our backgrounds and identities.

The images from this project are of the palms of people in my life whom I cherish: representing the fate that we all share despite living different lives in different places, and the faith that we will once again cross paths in the future.

This project is supported by the Community Arts Council of Vancouver + First Peoples’ Cultural Council.

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
The gallery is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm to 5pm.
Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.

To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com.

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The Artist

Sunsun Liu was born and raised in Thailand until 2018, when she immigrated to so-called Vancouver with her family. Living in Canada introduced Liu to Photography as an art form, and not just a means to an end to capture moments as photographs.

Currently, she is a second-year student studying Photography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Being a permanent resident naturally influenced her to experience Canadian culture, lifestyle, and Western mindset. Which, unconsciously, caused her to lose touch with her roots, but it also ignited the appreciation and the desire to strengthen her connection to her Thai heritage.

She uses photography as a way to unravel aspects of the culture she has yet to explore or experience. She has taken photographs as a form of documentation for her travels, her journey to immersing in her native culture, and her artistic expression.

Liu chooses to represent the raw and unfiltered essence of the Thai lifestyle from a citizen’s perspective; in order to move away from the commercial views and embrace the authenticity of her culture. She has also been experimenting with digital collages and other genres of photography to expand her knowledge of the practice, both technically and conceptually.

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