Artist wants Georgetown to remember its hidden neighbours

Walking by the corner of Main and Cross streets in downtown Georgetown, one may notice a colourful utility box covered in turtles, salamanders and fish.

The work is called In Our Neighbourhood and is artist Jungle Ling’s way of reminding locals that their neighbours aren’t just human.

“There are creatures here that can easily be overlooked in our pursuits to build or carry on with our lives as human beings,” Ling explained to HaltonHillsToday. “We often don’t know that they live among us. We also live in their space.”

Depicted in the work are the redside dace minnow, a brook trout, Jefferson salamanders and an eastern snapping turtle. As these creatures are unable to protest the destruction of their habitats, Ling wants to “remind ourselves to be empathetic.”

In the absence of such empathy, Ling believes people lose “civility. It’s not so much humanity, because humanity can be pretty weird. If we don’t think of others, we lose ourselves.”

This worldview emphasizing empathy appears to have been birthed in an environment where so many similar ones are: during dictatorship.

Ling was born in Taiwan. As the country is reputed to be one of the most free democracies in the world today, it’s hard to imagine it being anything else. But it was under a repressive regime ruled by the Kuomintang Party (KMT) until the ’80s.

The KMT originally ruled mainland China. After losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong’s communists, the party re-established itself on the island of Taiwan. It instituted martial law a number of times there. The most tumultuous period of anti-communist political repression was called the White Terror. It lasted from 1949 until 1992, when the new democracy ended the last of the country’s dictatorial powers.

Ling grew up in this context. He remembers doodling in his government-approved school textbooks, a major taboo at the time.

“You weren’t supposed to defile or deface the textbooks,” Ling recalled. “I got strapped a lot of times.”

But this small act of rebellion made his classmates laugh, leading young Ling to ask himself, why are we so serious all the time?

“There’s a part of me that believes if we laugh a little more, we get to know each other better,” he said.

He moved to Canada when he was 12 years old, living in Niagara Falls. Against what he called the “cartoonish” backdrop of the city, he found a lack of empathy in the local churches as well.

“We were like the test subjects for all the churches. It was like everyone wanted to save us,” Ling said in describing his early impressions of Canada.

This further instilled the need for empathy and taking oneself less seriously. The ethos manifested itself in his work decades later in Georgetown.

“You need to have a certain amount awareness of yourself to laugh at yourself, and also a certain amount of humility. So I hope those are the type of threads in the artwork on the box.”

Ling’s work is part of the Town of Halton Hills’ Under Wraps program, not to be confused with its Bell Box Mural Project. Under Wraps adorns the boxes using, as the name suggests, vinyl wraps instead of paint.

Those interested in Jungle Ling’s other works can follow his Instagram handle @Jungle_Ling.

Link to original article.