Uprooted

Uprooted, 2018

Four lightboxes with digital prints on translucent Flexface.

76 x 72.5 inches each

Created for the City of Richmond Public Art Program, with mentorship from artist Renee Van Halm.

Uprooted is a four-panel sequential drawing by Canadian artist and illustrator Patrick Wong, created for the Richmond Art Columns: Migration public art exhibition at Aberdeen SkyTrain Station in Richmond, British Columbia. The work was developed from an interview with an art student whose experience of being stranded at Toronto Pearson International Airport with an expired student visa became the basis for a narrative of waiting, movement, and bureaucratic uncertainty. Four rootless figures appear sleeping, waiting, walking through a jetway, and passing through airport security. Presented as four illuminated panels surrounding a SkyTrain station pillar, the images form an open-ended narrative that can be read in different sequences.