Celebrating Asian Excellence poster campaign marks Asian Heritage Month with message of positivity and promise
Boca del Lupo’s The Fishbowl on Granville Island and theatres across Canada display the new, rallying words and faces
LAST YEAR, watching a rise in anti-Asian racism in the wake of the pandemic, Boca del Lupo theatre artist Sherry J. Yoon rallied theatre professionals from across Canada to take part in a #StopAsianHate campaign.
This year, the group of over 200 Asian Canadian leaders within the theatre sector chose to steer the conversation to celebrating talents and achievements.
The result is the just-launched national Celebrating Asian Excellence poster campaign, whose text calls the project “a radical act in the face of racism, confronting prejudice and hate with positivity and promise for our
collective future”. You can see a larger version of the poster at Boca del Lupo’s The Fishbowl headquarters on Granville Island, as well as prominent displays at theatres across the country.
“With over 200 members, the size of our national presence reminds us of how
significantly Asian Canadians have contributed to the performing arts in
Canada and to the fabric of Canadian culture. Diverse as the Asian diaspora
is in our country, adversity has brought us together to support each other
in our differences, united by caring, compassion and respect for one
another,” reads the poster, which bears a big circle of portraits of the group’s members. “We continue to stand as allies with Black and Indigenous communities, and we acknowledge that Anti-Asian violence is part of a larger system of racism that we will continue to oppose in all its incarnations.”
Last year, during. the Stop Asian Hate drive, Yoon said of her campaign: “It’s just knowing that there’s an entity now that’s come together. It’s the first Asian arts-focused entity in Canada. That’s really powerful.”
For 2021, her quickly assembled group of professional theatre artists and leaders numbered 100, their faces depicted in black and white on the poster. This year’s brightly hued rendition has more than doubled that quantity of portraits.
For years, Yoon had looked for a way to galvanize the Asian theatre community in this country, and last year she expressed a hope that this growing group could not just bring people together, but go on to take more voices to the stage as well.
This year’s poster campaign invites more Asian voices to join the movement. “If you are an Asian performing artist, leader, practitioner or
administrator please join our initiative at
bocadellupo.com/initiatives/celebrating-asian-excellence”, the poster reads.
The Celebrating Asian Excellence campaign runs to May 30.
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