Kelcy Timmons Chan

Kelcy Timmons Chan (they/them) is a Cantonese Canadian American queer artist born in Hong Kong, raised in Vancouver and based in Toronto.

They work as a multidisciplinary contemporary pop artist and mural painter. In their work they explore community, duality and belonging through the lens of their experience as a biracial, gender-fluid, immigrant.

In Kelcy’s practice, they consider how food and people shape our communities and cultures. Having safe designated space is how folks generate a place of belonging and of comfort, and how we connect with the fabric of our identities.

Using food, little purple people and whimsical architecture, Kelcy promotes and supports local businesses, family-run restaurants and queer community spaces, while also exploring their mixed identity and their connections to these communities.

Read more here.

Kelcy is biracial. Born in Hong Kong and raised by a Cantonese mother and a German/American father, they immigrated to Canada in 2001. Growing up, they were called all sorts of names because people saw them differently to most asian people.

Kelcy was called bleached, wasian, halfie, white washed, and someone even came up with “egg”. Like “banana”, “oreo”, “coconut” or “twinkie”, people came up with the term “egg” because they believed that Kelcy’s ‘yellowness’ only existed on the inside; people thought it was a funny joke. Although Kelcy knew it was wrong and was uncomfortable, they went along with it because they avoided harsher names and slurs like ch*nk. Kelcy recognizes how much privilege exists in their specific biracial experience.

By using their egg motif, they reclaim these labels and highlight how common an experience this is for mixed-race folks and immigrants. In many of their egg paintings they use colours from various queer flags. They want these pieces to be a signal to queer people that this art is for them and about them, more specifically if you are of multiple races, genders and/or sexualities. It is not hard to acknowledge that people can be many things at once, and their eggs do that.

No two fried eggs are exactly the same, and neither are two mixed experiences.

Why Eggs?

Love is about the paths we take and the places we go when experiencing the many feelings that come from love. Love is not always positive or simple and is made even more complicated by interpersonal dynamics. I wanted to visualize many different interactions of love and the outcomes that are affected by all previous experiences.

In the piece, figures climb through a twisting perspectival landscape that can be interpreted into relatable experiences. The goal of the work is to show how our perception dictates our reality and how our proximity to love informs how we connect to those around us whether it be through complex experiences, common interactions, or a combination of both.

This piece is derived from a style I like to refer to as optical illusion architecture, or more simply twisty steps. These pieces are unplanned marker illustrations made without rulers that begin in the centre and grow in all directions. They are also fully optically illusionistic and can be viewed from every orientation.

Love shows the uniqueness of each person’s path given their distinct perspective, while also highlighting how prevalent many of these experiences are.

Love

Kelcy paints murals all across the Greater Toronto Area and is interested in painting nationally and internationally. Kelcy’s murals are about bringing vibrance to urban communities whilst representing the themes they predominantly work with in their artist practice: belonging, intersectionality, duality, as well as their various cultures and communities.

Kelcy has worked with StART Toronto, Halton Hills and Bellbox Murals and has done work with several private clients. Kelcy is open to painting their original designs as well as designs on behalf of others, and is currently open to new opportunities.

To view their murals, see the Murals tab and follow this link for the locations of all of their pieces.

For any inquiries or commissions, please email them at kelcy.timmonschan@gmail.com