Even The Most Beautiful Morning Cannot Bring Back The Evening | Press Release | Installation Shots

February 17th – March 13th, 2022

Opening Reception: February 17th, 6-9pm

Opening Hours: Saturdays and Sundays: 12-6pm (and by appointment). Walk-ins welcome!
Saturdays 12-6pm: To make sure there is Mahjong set+table available, you can reserve one, please RSVP Here.
Sundays 2-4pm: Mahjong Instructors will teach the game. RSVP Here.

Open Source Gallery presents Even The Most Beautiful Morning Cannot Bring Back The Evening, a new collaborative exhibition developed by five Toronto-based artists/designers, and organized by artist Petrina Ng.

The exhibition’s title, Even the most beautiful morning cannot bring back the evening, is a (perhaps poor) translation of a Chinese proverb, and utilized here to refer to cultural loss by means of colonialism and migration. The proverb offers a contrary perspective to its western and more optimistic counterpart, “it’s always darkest before dawn”.

In this exhibit, Anne Campbell, Petrina Ng, and Rachel Wallace share their latest collaboration: an editioned set of hand-cast, ceramic mahjong tiles. Featuring calligraphy by Alice Liang, the tiles have been reimagined from a contemporary and diasporic perspective. Community members are invited to take part in game play.

Christie Carrière and Florence Yee’s publication, Mahjong, here, there, now, always, offers socio-political insight into the game’s East/Southeast Asian origins and community-rooted legacies. Re-published by small press Durable Good, this booklet also doubles as an instruction manual for learning to play.    

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Petrina Ng (she/her) is an artist and organizer. Her collaborative practice proposes alternative responses to redress legacies of colonialism. She is a member of arts collectives Gendai, Waard Ward, and with Rachel Wallace, co-founder of arts publisher Durable Good.

Anne Campbell is an artist who works in ceramics and sculpture.
Christie Carrière is a visual artist.
Rachel Wallace is a graphic designer and visual collaborator.
Florence Yee (they/he) is a visual artist and co-founder of Chinatown Biennial.

Editorial input for Mahjong Here, There, Now, Always by Hannia Cheng.

Special thanks to Alexx Boisjoli.

Mahjong Instructors:

Feb 20: Zichen “Oliver” Yuan 袁子晨 is a designer and artist born in Wuhan, China who is currently working in Brooklyn, NY. He explores the social space through meaningful and playful experiments covering industrial design, installations, photography, and more. He played the first mahjong game on a very cold day during the winter of 2017 in Beijing, China.

Feb 27: Sophia Ma was born and raised in Manhattan, NYC. As an American born Chinese, she fell in love with the game of mahjong in my early teens and have been playing since. One of her favorite mahjong movies is Fat Choi Spirit with Andy Lau. When she is not working as an accountant you can find her trying to fulfill her dream of eating at every NYC restaurant at least once (wish her luck)!

Mar 6: Michael C. Liu is an award-winning educator and actor with over 15 years of experience teaching and creating arts in a variety of organizations. He develops, designs, and conducts workshops for students and employees of all backgrounds to discover and enhance their cultural competencies. Growing up watching his family play Mahjong during every Lunar New Year, Michael learned to appreciate the beauty and benefit of the “National Essence” while some of his peers stopped embracing this guilty pleasure. Through his sessions, the esthetics of Mahjong become a telescope through which everyone can appreciate the similarities and differences of their cultural heritage. Visit www.michaelcliu.org to find out how you can benefit from his workshops.

Mar 13: Kathleen Miao is a native New Yorker – born and raised on the Lower East Side. She is the daughter of two Chinese immigrant parents who taught her how to play the Shanghainese version of majong along with her older sister. As a family, they play majong whenever everyone is home and during the holidays. It gets serious at times. She also enjoys learning how to play the Cantonese version of majong with her friends during social gatherings. She is currently a project coordinator at Energy Futures Group, an energy consulting firm based in Vermont. She is a 2020 graduate from Franklin & Marshall College where she majored in Environmental Studies with a minor in Art History. During her free time, she likes to stay active: biking as a form of transportation, skating – roller and ice, practicing yoga, and attending aerial hoop and silk classes.

Prizes for winners are donated by OlalaSticker.

Reserve a table to play with your friends via the RSVP Form here.