Imagine you were a successful art professor in your home country, but decided to give it all up and leave your family to attend one of Canada’s finest art schools. You speak no English so you’re forced to work menial jobs like making pizza, doing people’s laundry, and busing tables at a cafeteria. But you learn English, master your craft, and work diligently until you become an art professor at the very university where you began your immigrant journey.

None of this is very hard to imagine for Chinese-Canadian artist Gu Xiong. In this Full Frame Close Up, he shares his immigrant story and the impact it has had on his art.