Personal Geographies
Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC
(2025)
For: North Vancouver School District
Invited by:
Amelia Epp
Photo Credits: Khim Hipol
Workshop documentation of Personal Geographies, Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, 2025. Photo credit: Khim Hipol.
Professional Development Workshop
Materials: Marker, paper, clay.
Che combines embodied movement mapping and her participatory performance practice in this workshop to create a collaborative visual map of "personal geographies". Guided by questions such as "How far are we from your current home?" and "How far are we from where you grew up?", participants create a large-scale circular diagram using the length of their foot fall and the location of their bodies in space. When a participant walks all the way to the circle's centre, the distance became palpable to everyone. The diversity of the group is made apparent: some are minutes from their childhood home, while others have traversed half the globe to stand in this room. This workshop makes subjectivity and intimacy visible within the structure of data-collection. The resulting map records not ground elevation or road names, but each person's felt relationship to place.
Xinwei Che, Personal Geographies workshop.
Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, 2025. Photo credit: Khim Hipol.
Xinwei Che, Personal Geographies workshop.Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, 2025. Photo credit: Khim Hipol.
Xinwei Che, Personal Geographies workshop.Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, 2025. Photo credit: Khim Hipol.
Xinwei Che, Personal Geographies workshop.Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, 2025. Photo credit: Khim Hipol.