Diaspora Identity & Pathways into Chinese-Western Relations
Ophelia Chang (BCom ’09), revisits an early collage she created while attending secondary school in Markham. She explores how its meaning has evolved alongside her academic and creative trajectory, including an undergraduate Research Opportunity Program project at the Munk School, in which she studied Chinese-Western relations under the supervision of Professor Tong Lam.
“Banana (Self‑Portrait): Returning to an Early Collage”
I made my first collage in Grade 9, in a Markham classroom where we were asked to create an artwork that represented something about ourselves. I cut a banana out of magazine clippings — a literal, uneasy nod to the “banana” metaphor that circulates in the Chinese Canadian community: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. At fourteen, I didn’t yet have the language for cultural dissonance or the subtle pressures of belonging. Collage became the medium that allowed me to express something I was already living but couldn’t articulate.
The materiality of the piece feels more revealing now. The glossy fragments of Western magazines serve as an unintentional commentary on assimilation. When the collage resurfaced in a 2024 Arts Etobicoke exhibition, seeing it on a gallery wall reframed it for me: not as a student project, but as an early gesture toward themes that continue to shape my creative thinking. For clarity, I now refer to it descriptively as Banana (Self‑Portrait), though it never had a title at the time.
Returning to this early work has reminded me how identity is assembled — through fragments, inheritances, and the ongoing work of making sense of oneself. Collage accommodates contradiction without demanding resolution, and in that way, it mirrors the process of growing into one’s own story.
Artist bio
Ophelia Chang is a Toronto‑based artist and writer whose work explores identity, memory, and the quiet negotiations of diaspora. A University of Toronto alumna, she brings a parallel background in governance and risk analysis to her creative practice, informing her interest in systems, structure, and the unseen forces that shape self‑perception. Her first collage—created in Grade 9 and later exhibited by Arts Etobicoke—remains a touchstone in her ongoing exploration of how meaning shifts over time.
