Paul Wong’s award-winning career as a multi-media artist spans over three decades. The native Vancouverite is best known for being a self-invented video pioneer, but my favourite pick of his many titles is “organizer of public interventions.” He embraces and engages, sometimes roughly, with issues of sex, censorship, race, and death. Wielding his weapons of video, photography, and performance, he has deftly broached subjects that many would run from, and as a result, many of his once-controversial works are now considered classics.
Currently on exhibit at the Glenbow Museum is Wong’s installation: 2 Hot 2 Handle. Wong was invited to work directly with Glenbow’s diverse collections and to create new work based on his exploration. 2 Hot 2 Handle was inspired by the Glenbow’s extensive collection of western bronze sculptures. Meshing the old with the new, Wong fuses the sculptures with images from the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo Association’s (ARGRA’s) Canadian Rockies International Rodeo in 2009.
Set within Glenbow’s permanent exhibition: Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, Wong delves into this unconventional part of Alberta’s history, while grappling with the complexities of gender, masculinity and community. “While looking at Mavericks, it was when I saw the rainbow flag in the grasslands that it really came alive for me,” says Wong. “There is, was, and always will be a queer history in Alberta’s cowboy culture.”
Wong found himself equally inspired by his first excursion to a rodeo, when he visited Canada’s largest gay rodeo in Strathmore last summer. He went with just his “happy snap” camera, not really knowing what to expect. “The people were so open and warm, they let me take their pictures with no questions asked. I felt a real sense of community and was very moved by the love I saw there. I really wanted to make those bronzes come alive with the heroes and heroines, the men and women of the gay rodeo circuit.”
Recently, Wong has begun taking some of his old video footage that’s never been shown and putting it out into the world. When visiting the Glenbow last month for a viewing of some of his recent video work, he screened a short film called Perfect Day. This self-portrait of Wong indulging in a variety of drugs by himself in his bedroom, straddles the line between humour and despair. While high, Wong searches desperately for a recording of the song Perfect Day by Lou Reed. He succeeds, but the CD is scratched, and the song skips, sending Wong into a bitter revolt, then on a journey to the bathroom to clean the CD with copious amounts of Windex.
“I was really nervous watching that,” says Wong, moments after the film is over. “It’s funny in parts, I know, but a certain part of me is horrified by it. But that’s the beauty of recording things and just putting them out there. When I looked back at this, I knew that I had edited it the morning after, when I was still high. But I didn’t change anything. If you start changing things, where do you stop? It’s real life, it was true at that moment.”
Truth seems to be a cornerstone in Wong’s practice as an artist, even though he is consistently unpredictable and never seems to stop growing and changing. “When I first picked up a video camera it was my way to look at the world, record it, edit it, and put it back out there. But now it’s more about seeing things. The world is big, and luckily, I have an insatiable appetite. I’m excited about the world, I like seeing things that make me mad, make me excited, make me love.”
His goal is to keep putting his work out there, and he encourages his fellow artists to do the same. “There can be a lot of self-doubt when you’re doing stuff that’s not mainstream, that’s not traditional film, or that’s not beautiful to watch. But you can’t just keep holding on to your work, you have to be truthful. For me, truth equals beauty, just like silence equals death.”
It’s clear that Wong will not keep silent, as he continues to stay up to ten projects ahead of even himself. Vancouver is the site for his latest project: 5. Five site-specific events happening on five Saturdays during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Drawing together 79 artists from 22 countries, 5 will take the public on five extraordinary journeys through real, invented and imagined places. If you can’t make it there in person, each event can be experienced virtually, beginning February 13th.
In the meantime, you can still catch 2 Hot 2 Handle at the Glenbow Museum until February 21st.
