Echo Cai / 子轩

Chinese born 子轩 / Echo Cai is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and columnist. The founder and curator of the Chinese-Australian Contemporary Artists (‘CACA’) and Art Echo, Cai arrived in Australia in 1989 after completing her Bachelor Degree in Art at Peking University. Since 2003 Cai has exhibited widely, and her works are represented in private and public collections in Australia and China.

In addition to CACA shows, since 2014, Cai has curated a range of group exhibitions in Melbourne, including the Chinese Australian Artists Exhibition (2017), This Street Art Event: Mapping Melbourne Art Festival (2017), Multi Art Fashion Show (2016) and the Melbourne Chinese Australian Short Movie Competition (2015).

For Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话, Cai has collaborated with writer 沈志敏 / Shen Zhimin and photographer 昵昵 / NiNi.

Shen is an Australian-Chinese writer. Since he arrived in Australia in 1990, he has published three novels, including Dynamic Treasure Trove (1996) and a philosophical paper entitled A Treatise on Comprehensive Logic. His writing has been published in Chinese newspapers in Australia, North America, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong and has been awarded more than ten literary awards. His work is included in the History of Overseas Chinese Literature published in China.

Ni Ni is a film photographer, graphic designer, stylist and brand manager with more than six years of experience. Arriving in Australia in 2010 as a young person from China, her creative outlook encompasses a cross-pollination of Chinese and Western inspiration that focuses on people and the everyday.

Together with her artistic collaborators, for Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话, Cai presents Retracing The Great Walk / 再现淘金路 2021 featuring a photographic series alongside a moving image work. The artwork retraces the journey Chinese immigrant workers walked from Robe in South Australia to the Victorian goldfields during the gold rush due to Victoria’s discriminatory migration policies. As writer Osmond Chiu writes for the Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话 book:

‘The Great Walk’ as it became known, was a product of the first anti-Chinese legislation passed in Australia and the British Empire. In June 1855, the colony of Victoria passed legislation imposing a poll tax of 10 pounds on every Chinese arrival, also limiting the number of Chinese on board each vessel to one person for every 10 tonnes of goods. Evasion of the anti-Chinese legislation caused ships to offload Chinese migrants in New South Wales and South Australia. Robe was the closest port to the Victoria goldfields outside of Victoria.

Drawing upon the photographic archives, works of literature in English and Chinese, oral history records and field visits to regional communities, the artwork examines how the walk has shaped perceptions of place and Chinese identity in regional communities today. Focusing on significant community sites in Robe and Ballarat, gardens and places of work, recreation, memorialisation and worship, the artwork expresses the legacy of early Chinese-Australians through notions of remembrance, commemoration, resilience and love.

From 20-23 January 2022, the collectives’ work will be displayed at Missing Persons art space alongside those of fellow artists 关伟 / Guan Wei, 傅红 / Fu Hong and 欧阳昱 / Ouyang Yu. Check out our Exhibition Program for details.

ET—1) In his text for the Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话 book, writer 趙明佑 / Osmond Chiu writes:

Chinese is a term with multiple meanings that can be lost in translation between Mandarin and English. With different conceptions of Chinese ethnicity and Chinese nationals, it is an identity that can be a hybrid, transnational identity but is shaped by routes, between the places that are points along the way of the journey.

The story of Chinese Australian identity has been fundamentally shaped by those routes of migration; from the arrival of Mak Sai Ying in Sydney from Guangdong over two centuries ago to the Gold Rush that brought tens of thousands to the Australian colonies to the more recent waves of migration from South East Asia, in the wake of Tiananmen, the handover of Hong Kong and skilled middle-class migration in the 21st century. But that identity is also one impacted on by dislocation, marked with exclusion. It has and is shaped by being portrayed as alien, or “the Other”. We are seen both as a victim of circumstances but also suspected of being a threat from within that will unfairly take this land.

Those routes that Chinese gold-seekers were forced to walk from Robe in South Australia to the Victorian goldfields were shaped by these perceptions. ‘The Great Walk’ as it became known, was a product of the first anti-Chinese legislation passed in Australia and the British Empire. In June 1855, the colony of Victoria passed legislation imposing a poll tax of 10 pounds on every Chinese arrival, also limiting the number of Chinese on board each vessel to one person for every 10 tonnes of goods. Evasion of the anti-Chinese legislation caused ships to offload Chinese migrants in New South Wales and South Australia. Robe was the closest port to the Victoria goldfields outside of Victoria.

The first ship, the ‘Land of Cakes’, with 264 migrants on board, more than the population of Robe at the time, arrived in Guichen Bay on 17 January 1857. (1) While it was far from a safe harbour, with at least three shipwrecks, from 1857 to 1862, approximately 16,500 landed at the port to take the arduous, exhausting journey. (1) The 500-kilometre walk took between three to five-and-a-half weeks when conditions were good but with no guarantee of prosperity. (1)

That history of the nineteenth century still shapes us today. From the sinophobic narratives that invoke the fear of takeover through migration and ownership of land and property to ‘unfair’ competition that affect material living standards to the conception of what constitutes an Australian but also what it is to be Chinese in Australia. As John Fitzgerald explained in his book ‘Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia’:

‘Chinese were excluded from Australia because they were held to be incapable of appreciating the universal values that made some people particularly Australian’. (2 p.26)

Those values were freedom, egalitarianism and mateship. In contrast were the inverted, stereotypical Chinese values around hierarchy and servility, which characterised a cultural disposition to think and behave differently. (2 p.28) That false dichotomy is now cited by public figures who question the ‘loyalty’ of Chinese Australians and whether there should be continued migration from mainland China.

Rather than understanding diaspora identity as the product of routes over roots, it is about understanding those routes of migration and the impacts that they have had.

Echo, you have had a longstanding interest in remote and regional Australia, the landscape and its peoples, including the stories of early Chinese-Australians. Would you tell us a little more about this and what drew you towards making this new artwork that retraces The Great Walk?

ET—2) Echo, much of the discourse around The Great Walk and the history of the early Chinese working and living in Australia centres around discrimination and exploitation. This dialogue is appropriate as we need to acknowledge this as part of our history, from the Gold Rush to the White Australia policy and the more recent escalation in racism that we have seen during the pandemic. As Chiu writes above, the history of the nineteenth century continues to shape wrongful outlooks today. In your artwork, you wanted to convey this and stories and feelings of strength, resiliency and love. Would you elaborate for us?

ET—3) To create the work, you have drawn upon the photographic archives, works of literature in English and Chinese, oral history records and field visits to regional communities. I think this provides a diversity of perspectives and ideas. I’m interested in the works of literature first. I know you have drawn inspiration from a new work of literature that your collaborator Shen Zhimin has recently completed.

Whilst the photographs and moving image work are the finished works presented, the original artwork is, in a sense, a performance work enacted by you, your collaborators and the local communities engaged in the art-making process. It takes its inspiration from Shen's novel, where a group of people from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds retrace The Great Walk together.

Can you tell us a little more?

ET—4) The decision to shoot the portraits in black and white feels apt. It cultivates a sense of nostalgia reminiscent of the nineteenth-century photographic practice prevalent during the gold-rush period.

In addition to the local descendants interviewed, the suite of portraits presented includes Charles Zhang, the President of the Chinese Australian Cultural Society Ballarat Inc, your collaborators - Shen Zhimin and Ni Ni - and a self-portrait.

Collectively, there are ten portraits of Chinese-Australians - recent immigrants and those with Chinese connections going back three, four and five generations in this country. 

The videography works in tandem with the portrait series, telling the stories of the sitters photographed in a first-person interview narrative style. It feels wonderfully fresh and genuine to hear their stories in their own words, to feel their sense of pride.

Would you elaborate a little further on the choice of subject matter, the black and white format and the connection between the photographs and moving image work? 

NOTE:—To learn more about each sitter, watch the moving image work below. 

ET—5) It seems to me that the strength of this artwork stems from its community engagement and collaborative, cross-disciplinary approach. Would you reflect a little on this mode of working?