CYNTHIA O'BRIEN
CHINATOWN REMIXED FESTIVAL
Chinatown Remixed Festival
Festival showcasing hidden gems, pairing local artists with Chinatown storefronts,
where they perform or install art in non-conventional gallery spaces.
Celebrating local culture in the Somerset West area of Ottawa.
My childhood is infused with images of this neighbourhood - from buying White Rabbit candies and Hello Kitty paraphernalia, to memories of Christmas Eve family dinners at our
favourite restaurant on Somerset Street.
I now live in the neighbourhood and revel in the diversity of our community.
FATHER'S SHRINE
Chinatown Remixed 2013
This sanctum is a cultural mixture of the French mausoleums, the Catholic grotto and the Chinese street shrine that offers prayer to Tu Di Gong (Earth God) to look after my family’s fortune. It is also sanctuary for my recently deceased father, who loved the dumplings found on Somerset Street. A place, I hope, that reaches between this world and the next. I am sure my Dad will put a good word in with the gods on my behalf to help, bless and protect his family.
Wah Shing Grocery Store
FORTUNE COOKIES
Chinatown Remixed 2010
With my sweet tooth and many Remixed meeting dinners I am finding myself influenced by the tradition of the Fortune Cookie. Physically eating the tiny sweet and mentally digesting the words that cultivate dreams of hope.
I baked two batches and all cookies come with their own slightly skewed fortunes to be found at Aline's Hair Design.
Enjoy! 享受
FEILD OF FORTUNE
Fieldworks, Perth, Ontario
Vernal Equinox / March 20th, 2010
Summer Solstice / June 21st, 2010
It is the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring and the time of rebirth. My inspiration is from Vincent van Gogh’s, “The Sower” (1888). In the painting the peasant farmer toils for a future crop that will allow his family to live a meager life. The beauty of the sunrise is not noticed because of the backbreaking work. My hands are soft in comparison and the crop I sew is one of the spirit. Yet the peasant and I share the same hope for the future.
I sew the field with fortune cookies, these seed like edibles hold the promise of renewal. Exposed to the elements, the cookies will slowly dissolve, moving from the surface into the earth with the changing seasons revealing their fortunes for that year.
Talk does not cook rice.
Chinese Proverb
LUCKY DUCK
Chinatown Remixed 2009
There is a fascination seeing our food on public display. Birds hang in the air; fish and beef tongues lie on ice exciting our interest in the wonders of cooking. I love to visit these shops and watch the people who know how, choose the main coarse of their next culinary masterpiece. I am no foodie, yet I visit thinking of what I would do. I would dry out the chicken feet and hang them from the skirts of clay women. Fish heads would be made into moulds and these derivative pieces would line my living room walls.
Bar B-Q Ducks would hang, wrapped in the collected fortunes from my life.
Visiting Wakui Grocery the Bar B-Q Ducks are hard miss. Their forms are long and lean, skin a rich red/brown, the smell mouth watering and then there is the head.
Who could not be attracted to this?
Lucky Duck is a fortune teller, a wise talisman who not only speaks of food, culture, form, colour but also how to look at the world even when hanging from a hook.
Cynthia O'Brien rubbing shoulders with the Famous & Glamours China Doll!!
