Momentum: Power and Identity in Sports

Sport occupies a paradoxical position within modern society. Celebrated as a universal language capable of transcending difference, it also functions as one of the most powerful cultural technologies through which nations imagine themselves, citizenship is performed, and belonging is regulated. Momentum: Power and Identity in Sports brings together works by Felicia Chang, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wong Ping, and a major new commission by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES alongside historical artifacts, athlete memorabilia, photography, and moving image. Together they examine sport as a contested arena where diaspora, nationalism, race, gender, and collective memory converge.

Rather than illustrating sporting history, the participating artists approach sport as a conceptual framework through which broader structures of power become visible. Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s participatory ping-pong table installation invites collective play as a form of social practice, gesturing toward a shared future shaped through collaboration and active engagement. Hong Kong artist Wong Ping's animation installation, set on a surreal golf course, uses vivid storytelling and dark, absurd humour to expose the intertwined politics of wealth, access, and desire. Canadian artist Felicia Chang's photographic series follows young female field hockey players as they navigate adolescence, tracing how athletic participation produces forms of identity, resilience, and collective aspiration. Commissioned for Momentum, Seoul-based collective YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES presents a text-based installation combining AI-generated imagery with the collective's signature rhythmic typography and cinematic pacing. Through the figure of an Asian Canadian female hockey player, the work examines hockey as a form of secular religion in Canada, exposing the racialized and gendered conditions through which patriotism, belonging, and citizenship continue to be imagined and performed.

The exhibition also presents more than a century of Chinese Canadian sporting histories through jerseys, medals, equipment, archival documents, photographs, and personal objects, complimented by a newly commissioned video installation weaving together historical sporting moments spanning generations from early pioneers to Olympians, professional athletes, and community organizers. Rather than privileging singular moments of athletic success, it foregrounds the cumulative force of lives shaped by migration, exclusion, resilience, and community-building, revealing histories long absent from Canada's dominant sporting imagination.

Presented during Canada's hosting of the FIFA World Cup and on view throughout the tournament, Momentum considers the stadium, the arena, and the sports bar as contemporary public spheres where national identities are performed and collective emotions mobilized. Against the patriotic spectacle of international sport, the exhibition foregrounds diasporic histories that are simultaneously local and transnational, rooted and mobile. Rather than asking whether racialized athletes belong within the nation, the exhibition explores how diasporic communities have continually reshaped the meaning of nationhood. If nationalism relies upon athletic spectacle to produce coherent narratives of collective identity, diaspora unsettles that coherence, revealing belonging not as a fixed condition but as an ongoing process of negotiation. In doing so, Momentum proposes sport not as an escape from politics, but as one of the most visible cultural stages upon which the politics of citizenship, representation, and belonging continue to unfold.

Momentum: Power and Identity in Sports is curated by Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee, Olivia Chow, and Hosea Cheung. The exhibition is generously supported by the Government of Canada, the Province of British Columbia, the David and Dorothy Lam Foundation, Jack and Sylvia Gin Foundation, and the Chan Family Foundation.

For press inquiries, images, or further information, contact Sophia Cheng at sophia@sophiachengpr.com.