Soba’s Corner: A Chinese-Canadian Cooking Show

Artist: Snack Witch Joni Cheung

Opening Reception

Friday Jan 10th @ 6:00 PM

Gallery Open Thursday to Sunday, 11:00 AM -6:00 PM

YouTube food channels are online spaces where diasporic communities go to connect with their heritage and stories by recreating foods that they grew up eating or have never tasted before. These platforms provide knowledge that can be easily disseminated between family and friends who physically can't be together. In these worlds, authors can speak to their connections to dishes they are teaching others to make. However, some narratives need to be re-examined and chewed on.

Motivated by her ancestors' relationship to food and migration, Soba’s Corner is a video series that unpacks distinct Chinese-Canadian dishes from specific provinces. Posted on YouTube and disguised as a typical how-to cooking show, another conversation and narrative are hidden in the Canadian English closed captions and the “recipe” linked in the description box.

About the Artist: 🔮 Snack Witch aka Joni Cheung 🍡 is a grateful, uninvited guest born—and knows she wants to die—on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Stó:lō, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh peoples. They are currently toiling over their MFA on the stolen lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka peoples to become a Certified Sculpture Witch at Concordia University. She holds a BFA with Distinction in Visual Art (2018) from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. As a wicked #magicalgirl ✨ who eats art and makes snacks, she has exhibited and curated shows, off- and online, across Turtle Island.

They are a recipient of numerous awards, including the BC Arts Council Scholarship and the Dale and Nick Tedeschi Studio Arts Fellowship. She was waitlisted for the SSHRC - Joseph-Armand Bombardier: Canada Graduate Master’s Scholarship.

IMA’s Gallery Program acknowledges the financial support of the province of British Columbia