ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Karen Tam’s installations illuminate precisely both the ways in which interaction between and across cultural divides. As an institution of small town life, and as an installation in contemporary art galleries across the country, Canadian Chinese restaurants are a diasporic counterpublic. The diasporic counterpublic recognizes how diasporas are communities that look both inward and outward. As diasporic counterpublics, Chinese restaurants stage over and over again the delicate negotiations and interactions that constitute their publicness. Tam draws a connection between the space of the contemporary art gallery and the space of the Chinese restaurant. Old-timer Chinese restaurant owners sit at a bench at the doorway to the restaurant. Tam’s Gold Mountain Restaurant installations perfectly capture public specific physicality. In many ways, diasporas are characterized by the lack of physical space, the loss of home and homeland.
