distance of distinct vision / point éloigné de vision claire

distance of distinct vision / point éloigné de vision claire was made in the quincentenary year of Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas. The work’s title explains the optic principle of depth of field and the distance it takes for a subject to come into focus. The artist found this described in a Chinese encyclopedia that had belonged to her father. This ethos contrasts the invasive and authoritarian perspective of colonists, the legacy of which Laiwan witnessed in reportage on the Kanesatake Resistance at Oka in 1990. Laiwan uses indirect language to create distance between her subjects and viewers. She also employs translation - of her adopted country's two official languages and her ancestors' mother tongue – to convey the discrepancy between perception and communication. The serial format of the installation illustrates how Laiwan deconstructs and spatializes the structure of the book form. 

The work is organized into five chapters: The Imperialism of Syntax / L’Impérialisme de la Syntaxe; Ubiquitous China / La Chine Omniprésente, which references The Ubiquitous Chinaman, the title of a section in chapter 35 of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s 1887 book The History of British Columbia; Savage / Sauvage; they did not rest in quiet even here / ils n’ont pu trouver le repos, pas même ici, which is quoted from a children’s history book titled Christopher Columbus and the Discovery of America (1896); and epilogue / épilogue. Savage / Sauvage

Curated by Brice Canyon, distance of distinct vision was first exhibited at Western Front in 1992, which was the quincentenary of Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas. The Front also published the installation in a book format, accompanied by three essays. The website version was commissioned by Liz Park for her 2007 exhibition The Limits of Tolerance: Re-framing Multicultural State Policy at Centre A.