User:Rooftoppp/sandbox

I think the wiki page can use more personal details about Richard. It does say some stuff about his inspiration for getting involved with HIV/AIDS artwork and activism, but it doesn't explain the emotions that he felt while researching and talking to individuals with AIDS/HIV. The article can also use more background into his childhood and his upbringing, things that would have affected his perception of the LGBTQ+ community, along with AIDS.

“Richard Fung.” Richard Fung | Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org/artists/richard-fung.

Ricard Fung. www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/about/biographycv/.

“Richard Fung.” OCAD UNIVERSITY, 27 July 2017, www2.ocadu.ca/bio/richard-fung.

Ali, Jonathan. “Richard Fung: No Easy Readings.” Caribbean Beat Magazine, 31 Aug. 2016, www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-141/richard-fung-no-easy-readings#axzz4xU0sLlho.

Career

Along with being recognized internationally for his works, Fung has been published several times in local magazines such as Asiandian and Fuse. He served as a board member from 1995-99. Early on in his career Fung worked as an animator for community video production, and later became a staff producer at Rogers Cable TV. Fellow video artist, John Greyson, encouraged Fung to abandon his graduate studies at Ontario College of Art and pursue video production instead, which he did. After Fung had directed his first film, Orientations, in 1984 he joined the DEC Film and Video distribution while assisting in the first anti-racism film festival, Colour Positive- in Toronto. AIDS breakout and social stigma

During the breakout of AIDS in the United States, those surrounding Fung in Canada often said there was no real danger to gay men in their country. Little did Fung know, a plethora of Asian men around him were HIV+, and some even died. Focusing specifically on racism and AIDS in the Asian community, Fung realized that their side was being ignored in the narrative that has primarily been about white gay men. Fung attributes this obliviousness to the stereotype that Asian men in general are not sexual beings, and therefore cannot be homosexual. The degree at which social stigma takes place is bringing about the sort of shame and seclusion that has ravished the community during this time period.

Early life Growing up in repressive Trinidad, Fung attended a Catholic-based school which solidified his views about race and class and its effects in any given society. After finishing adolescent schooling, he moved to equally-repressive and equally-Catholic Ireland for secondary school, then Canada for university. It wasn't until moving to Canada that Fung met his future partner, Tim McGaskell, at a Marxist study group. The expectation that he would be an architect and have an aptitude for mathematics, which was perpetuated by his Chinese heritage, did not become reality. He attempted to study industrial design but was derailed in the process. When he realized the field wasn't his forte he entered the photoelectric arts department at the Ontario College of Art.