Immigrating to another country at an early age has unexpectedly allowed Sidi He, a Chinese-Canadian artist that aims at improving people’s lives and inspiring them to be creators, to incorporate life into art through her experiences of overcoming the difficulties brought by cultural differences and the process of gradually adapting to the new life in Canada. This creative approach is not only reflected in her artwork, but also in the parent-child charity event she participates in.
The elements of nostalgia and nature could be found in almost every piece of Sidi’s work. As an immigrant to Canada, she never let go of longing for her birthplace Guangdong, a province located in southern China. Sidi spent a lot of time exploring nature during her childhood when living there with her grandparents. Catching and storing insects in glass bottles to observe the magic done by nature was her favorite activity. After moving to Canada, Sidi had the opportunity to travel to Europe and Asia before she started her master program at Parsons to embrace different forms of beauty and mastered her skills in floral design.
Sidi created Echoes from Home, a very special project that reflects her great memories when she lived with her grandparents in this beautiful and traditional place called Xiexiangtang that’s located in Guangdong.
“A lot of younger generations have moved out for more career opportunities in the cities,” Sidi further explained, “the village has become a ghost town, and I want to bring living spirits back like they used to. So, I applied real-life heartbeat sounds of elderly residents in town as echos, representing pulses and lives. Echoes from Home makes the town revitalize,” she elaborated.
In addition to releasing her own homesickness, Sidi is also dedicated to helping other immigrant families. She is now preparing a parent-child charity event, where a total of 12 groups of families will meet in the city park to observe the deep and shallow petals and leaves by picking flowers and weeds, and to touch the thick or thin veins of plant life. Through plaster sculptures, parents and children will work together to create botanical reliefs to preserve the unique spring beauty of Santiago as handicrafts in their homes. This will be the third charity event of Pacific Women and Children’s Foundation, following previous events where Sidi helped relieve stress for moms during the epidemic through flower arrangements.
Previous Charity Event, Pacific Women and Children’s Foundation
“They found me because they thought my Chinese background and artwork would be a comfort to them and I had some teaching experience too”, she demonstrated, “as someone who just became a mother, I completely understand the difficulties and pressure during this process, which is why I am very happy to work with them to organize a floral event with the goal of healing moms”.
Sidi was responsible for the design and direction of the whole event. Since the event was timed to coincide with Halloween, she specially spray-painted 20 pumpkins in advance in pink. The color pink not only made the ordinary pumpkins romantic, but also evoked the naive teenage years of the moms. The fresh smell of the flowers and the touch of the soft petals and leaves are both incredible stress relievers.
Mothers who come to the U.S. with their children are usually following their husbands that are relocated. But they are not able to work because of their visa status and have little time to socialize. These are the ones that are easily overlooked. The new identity and environment combined with the language barrier also exacerbates the difficulty of integrating into other children’s lives. Sidi believes that hosting events to help these children and parents and exposure to the natural environment here are the best and easiest to start with.
Flower Arrangements Event. © Sidi He
Bringing joy and comfort to people by incorporating art into their lives is the best way to heal all the unpleasantness in life for Sidi. She perfectly understands how life could be hard at some point and it may be difficult for some people to express themselves properly, particularly the mothers, who have been struggling to take care of their family while sticking to their career. In the future, Sidi He will continue to devote to generating more healing artwork based on life and nature.
