A section of Chai's exhibit at the Omineca Arts Centre

By Tommy Osborne

Arts and Culture

Omineca Arts Centre turned into hub of culture, languages, for May’s exhibit

May 10, 2024 | 4:51 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The Omineca Arts Centre’s Artist in Residence for May Cherie Chai is bringing many cultures across the world and 39 different languages to Omineca. Her exhibit, titled “Same Same, but Different,” features a wide variety of cultural items, and the walls are covered with common phrases and how to say them in other languages.

“We have different cultural percussion (instruments) and instruments the participants can try out for themselves. Also, we have different multilingual books and books on different cultures. There are also borrowed items, for example, the Indigenous doll, the masks, some childhood toys, just to show the world how different cultures enjoy the time, what they do in their free time and to also get them to experience it for themselves here,” Chai said, when explaining a portion of her exhibit.

The phrases on the walls are surrounded by upside down flowers, which Chai explains is to represent the importance of preserving our unique languages and cultures, as hanging flowers upside down is how you keep them fresh. As for the items themselves, it features food, toys, utensils, instruments, art, and many more. The exhibit features both Chai’s personal items as well as borrowed items, and putting it all together took a lot of work. However, Chai says the effort is definitely worth it to promote celebrating unique cultures. She added another big motivation was giving her five year old son a chance to connect with his roots, as Chai is from Singapore and Malaysia, but her son was born in Canada.

“I basically want to lead by example to show him that learning a different language, learning his mother tongue is normal, is good. He gets to connect with his roots, his family from the other side.”

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Regarding language, the exhibit has a corresponding website where you can hear how each phrase is pronounced. There are two websites, with the second of the two being for visually impaired people. The first website link is here, and you can find the second website link here.

With the exhibit highlighting both language and culture, Chai hopes visitors not only learn about how different cultures live, but also enjoy interacting with some of the objects. Beyond the key focus of learning, Chai added another big layer is also reflecting on your own culture to learn more about the way you live.

“Some things might seem foreign or different to you, but essentially everybody does the same thing. We sleep, we eat, we play, but in different ways. So I wanted to see the relatable aspect of it, like how we may be different in certain things that we do, or we eat, or we play, but we all do essentially the same thing to survive.”

“In order for people to come together from different backgrounds, understand each other, there must be a certain kind of trust. And to achieve that, you have to first self-reflect on yourself, know who you are first, and then you can start to understand somebody else’s (culture) and why it’s important for them to also have their culture preserved as much as yours.”

The official opening of the exhibit is tonight (May 10) from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., and it will be open all month so you can drop in whenever you’d like. On May 18 Chai will hold a seed postcard making workshop, and on the 25 there will also be a postcard writing and language exchange.

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