Bio

Amber Kwok is a painter, printmaker, and video artist who is currently in her fourth-year pursuing a double-Specialist in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. Informed by personal experiences of transnational migration, her work complicates the intersection between ethnicity and cultural identity. Amber is originally from Hong Kong, but spent early years in Denver, Colorado.

Artist Statement

In a series of painted panels–some cut to the form of window frames, and others envisioning the view outside–Kwok examines the concept of homeland as a fantasy that can only exist from a distance. To her mother, homeland is not traced as a geographical location but rather as a living tether to moments in time. Growing up, bedtime stories recast significant historical events and famous Chinese characters–real or fictitious–as intimate components of their own family history. Motivated by her desire to “feel time,” Kwok’s mother currently travels extensively across China, reenacting journeys that took place centuries ago. In an interview, she expressed that “I thought I never could make it…dreams come true.” These trips are “like travelling along the time river.”
This unique fixation on origin with regards to time as opposed to space constructs. For Kwok, a vision of homeland–and by extension, a sense of belonging–characterised by ambiguity.  Emmanuel Ma Mung describes the question of “origin” as a concept which “enables the invention of a temporal continuity among individuals.” He introduces the idea that before diaspora–a “spatially dispersed social entity”–can reproduce itself, it must “produce itself as such.” Stuart Hall theorizes that cultural identity for diaspora is not a fixed origin towards which one can simply return, but something that requires “imaginative rediscovery” to reconstruct. Inspired by Karen Tam, Kwok reconstructs window frames from childhood homes and imagines the view behind them; embracing fantasy and sentimentality, this installation aims to give her imagined home a physical space to occupy.