Pacific Pilgrims is an exhibition that foregrounds the travel memoirs of Roy K. Kiyooka and Joanne J.Y. Hui as politicized creative practices that re-situate Asian Canadian¹ identity within new cultural flows of broader, transnational global forces. More specifically, both artists look back at troubling constructions of Asian identity in Canada from their respective travels through the coastlands of Honshu/Osaka, Japan on the cusp of the 1970s, and Shanghai/Beijing, the People’s Republic of China into the 21st century.

Roy Kenzie Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw in 1926 and died in Vancouver in 1994. Initially a practitioner of geometric abstraction and sculptor he abandoned painting in 1970 and became a multidisciplinary artist critical of the institutional framework. He worked with photography, montage, poetry, music and film. As a teacher he taught in universities across Canada and was particularly linked with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of British Columbia. He taught at Sir George Williams University (Concordia) from 1965 to 1970 and exhibited at Galerie du Siècle along with other Montreal Plasticiens painters.

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.