Shu Jun Zhang
callout
How might we develop a safe framework for Chinese immigrants in Canada and bystanders to collaboratively intervene against microaggressions?
Within the discourse on racism and stereotypes, where do casual cultural jokes, unconscious remarks about someone’s eyes, or accent imitations locate themselves? These microaggressions, due to their uniqueness in intention, scale and visibility, are particularly hard to address. Research has also found that they can have major long term psychological and physical impacts.
Callout is a digital and physical experience aiming to fight against microaggressions within educational institutions. It includes a digital platform, an intervention jewelry piece, and a physical environment designed to encourage collective microinterventions between Asian-Canadians, their peers, and school faculties. Callout creates inclusive educational spaces for cultural minorities and builds a common understanding of cultural identities and diversity.
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Insight
The process of integration for children of Chinese immigrants in a foreign country is often perturbed by daily moments of microaggression. It often happens that they hear comments on their “exotic” beauty features or being greeted with a “ni-hao” by our foreign peers or strangers. As they respond with awkward laughter, they find themselves playing the scenario in their heads for the next few days trying to come up with a better response.
Idea
Expand inclusive environments and communities: the digital platform engages Chinese immigrants, their peers, and school faculties in developing individual self-awareness, collective engagement, and knowledge sharing through digital and physical experiences. By establishing a common cultural understanding outside of Western narratives through art and design, the echo pendant prompts real-life interventions and the callout environment highlights the support system within the educational institution.
Impact
My project allows targets, bystanders, and offenders of microaggressions to collaborate in learning, addressing, and calling out microaggressions within public spaces. The callout framework activates interactivity and collaboration between individuals, collective groups, and institutions that is designed upon cultural knowledge, interest in art & design, and space flow. The intent is to create macro-scale impacts through micro-scale daily actions through which every individual contributes to the building of inclusive spaces.
Biography
Shu is an artist, a designer, and a creative thinker with an interest in redefining everyday human relationships through physical and digital experiences. She takes inspirations from the intersections between art and design to create work with the goal to better understand people through the lenses of culture, identity, and social behaviours. She enjoys exploring with different materials and platforms to create immersive and inclusive experiences.
She also has a great passion for fashion and sustainability. Giving unwanted mundane objects a new life through design and craft has always been part of her art and design practices.