Dong Yue Su is very passionate about the Warm City Hot Art project. The conception of teaching liberal cultural values, through introducing local art and culture, to Chinese speaking communities was a preparation of more than ten years. After years of learning and working experiences, he thinks it is time to carry out his ideas.
Dong Yue Su grew up in Mainland China. After he received a university degree from South China Normal University, he took on various jobs involving communication and writing. His most prominent work was a five year stint working as a journalist at a politically progressive newspaper in South China. As the newspaper’s mandate was to speak the truth for the people against the authoritarian propaganda, he developed a strong sense of social responsibility and attachment to his readers. He says writing to influence a larger audience gave meaning to his life.
Since immigrating to Canada in 2005, he has had a thorough education in visual arts. Starting at Sheridan College he soon transferred to the University of Toronto (U of T) visual studies program, where he was fortunate to learn from Canadian artists and professors such as Edward Pien, Lisa Steels, Kim Tomczak, Joan Todd, Sue Lloyd, and George Hawken. While at U of T he was an assistant to Kim Tomczak, Joan Todd and Ed Pien. His works have been exhibited at the UTAC, Hart House, and other art venues on the U of T campus. Throughout all his art education, he was the only mature student from China in his class, and as a result related many of the new ideas he learnt back to his Chinese experience. Due to his experience as a journalist, he was very keen to share the exciting knowledge he learnt with his fellow Chinese. In 2006 Dong started a Chinese blog for this purpose. For example, he wrote about the broad definition of post-modernism in plain Chinese language.
Dong sees himself as a very distinct Chinese student in that he shows extensive interest in anything Western. His priority of study was to familiarize himself with a large scope of knowledge in the Humanities, which he called a “structural learning of Western Studies.” His curriculum included history, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, visual culture studies and so on. These reading intensive courses deterred many ESL students from East Asia, but not Dong. He was eager to fill up his deficit of knowledge in the Humanities due to his upbringing in the politically driven educational system of China.
After Dong got his Bachelor’s Degree from U of T, he was in search of a place where he belonged in the art world. He traveled to New York City and San Francisco; he explored the art community in Taiwan and Hong Kong; and he toured around Mainland China to attend art openings, artist talks, symposiums and other art activities. After a year of traveling, he was troubled to see that contemporary art could sometimes be elitist in some art communities he had visited. He found it his own mission to help contemporary art extend its reach beyond the enclosed circle of a very few cultural elites, to a broader Chinese audience. At this point, he decided to go back to the University of Toronto to further his study in a Master’s program of art history. He wanted to improve his writing on art. By doing this, he believed that he could make a bigger contribution to the art community than making his visual artworks that he also loved dearly.
In the art history program, he was fortunate to study with art historians such as Jenny Purtle, Barbara Fischer, and Carl Knappett. He fell in love with cultural theories, and he was aspired to become a scholar. Meanwhile, he was given a work-study opportunity at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery to engage myself with Canadian arts and practices. By the time he graduated, he felt he have more knowledge and experience to share with his fellow Chinese.
In the fall of 2011, he built a Chinese website titled International Art and Contemporary Ideas, in which he wrote articles about contemporary Canadian artists, topics on European art history, and art theories. His writing style was reader friendly because he always had the journalist writing in mind. On this website, he also wrote book reviews on English books that he thought might interest Chinese readers. He also wrote about interesting ideas he got from CBC radio and other sources. It took him six months to work on the site all by himself with great dedication. However, the project was not sustainable and came to a stop because of the lack of support.
Meanwhile, starting from the fall of 2011, Dong spent another two years of post-graduate study in East Asian Studies (EAS) at U of T. He studied Chinese art, literature, and cultural theories on the interrelations between the West and East Asia. This learning experience had helped him better communicate the “Western Studies” with the Chinese counterparts.
Since June 2013, Dong has been active in the art community of Vancouver. He moved from Toronto to Vancouver to work as an assistant to the curator Mr. Shengtian Zheng, who is the pivotal figure in bringing contemporary Chinese art to Vancouver. Working with Sheng, Dong was helping in the Vancouver Biennale projects, a translator for Yishu Journal (http://yishu-online.com/), and the executive editor of the journal’s Chinese edition. Starting from October 2013 to 2017, Dong has been a Mandarin tour guide at the Burnaby Art Gallery.
In mid 2014, Dong started to do art journalism, in both Chinese and English. Since then, he has been writing freelance articles for the English newspaper the Source (http://www.thelasource.com/), on art and culture. More importantly, he has been a part time journalist for the Singtao Daily. Singtao is the popular Chinese language newspaper in the Chinese community. Through his effort, Singtao is now covering some local art news.
Since October 2014, Dong has been the Chinese language tour guide at the Vancouver Art Gallery, introducing various exhibitions in the gallery to the Chinese speaking audience. Since then, Dong has been active in the art community. Since 2015 on the annual BC Cultural Days, Dong has given several Chinese language tours about public art, for the Public Art program of the City of Vancouver.
