Here Elsewhere Other Hauntings

Sat April 23, 2022  to Sat July 2, 2022
Kamloops Art Gallery (465 Victoria St #101, Kamloops, BC V2C 2A9, Canada)
Arts & Culture, Galleries & Exhibits


Jin-me Yoon

Central Gallery
Curated by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d’art de Joliette 

Here Elsewhere Other Hauntings is the first retrospective dedicated to the work of Jin-me Yoon, a Korean-Canadian artist living in British Columbia. Conceived and organized by the Musée d’art de Joliette, Québec, this exhibition brings together nearly 30 years of Yoon’s artistic practice through a thematic journey. It shares works that condense several of the artist’s preoccupations, including her relationship with her Korean heritage, her experience of migration and colonization, and her testing of the reality of what are considered Canadian ideals.

Yoon’s early photo and video work from the 1990s, including Souvenirs of the Self (1991), employs deconstruction as a strategy to challenge how identity is formed. Drawing on what she calls “inherited representations,” she introduces clues that disrupt our perception of things and critiques our preconceptions and stereotypes of gender, motherhood, race, culture, and nationality. In the early 2000s, while continuing to develop performances for the camera, Yoon abandoned her initial position as the object of the gaze—the surface onto which others could project—to instead assert herself as the subject in the process of becoming. The video camera then became a tool to express her embodied subjectivity manifested through duration. With works like the series As It Is Becoming (2006/2008), Yoon focused her attention on Asia, making projects that examined tourism and war, which lead her to reflect on the militarization on both sides of the Pacific. These concerns, along with her own family history, affected by Japanese imperialism, further complicate her relationship to the colonialism that still affects both Canada and Korea.

Here Elsewhere Other Hauntings presents a non-chronological, thematic exploration of Yoon’s recent works, including projects made in South Korea and on Canada’s Pacific coast that exhume the memories haunting these countries’ tourist areas. By drawing on iconic landscape images popularized by the tourism industry, Yoon questions the ideological underpinnings of these types of images. Each work suggests an alternative way of transmitting history. By focusing on what has not been retained through official narratives, Yoon creates situations that emphasize the contrasts between the landscapes and the actions that take place there. She deliberately addresses sensitive subjects related to power dynamics.

Although Yoon is renowned for this aspect of her practice, this survey exhibition adds another layer to our appreciation of her work. An important leitmotif in this selection of works is the interconnectedness of human lives shown at different stages of their existence. This is expressed through images of parents in their twilight years, gestures of filial support, and a sensitivity to spirituality, death, and nature understood as a global entity that encompasses humanity. Even though these notions are universal, it is the artist herself, along with her family and those close to her, that inhabit the works, adding an emotional overtone that complicates and destabilizes the clinical aesthetic of her conceptual representations. With this choice, she reminds us that exclusion and misconceptions are not just experienced on a theoretical level, they affect real individuals and their day-to-day lives.

This exhibition is produced and circulated by the Musée d’art de Joliette. It was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du gouvernement du Québec and the Fondation du Musée d’art de Joliette.

Generously sponsored by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill.


Kamloops Art Gallery
City Centre

About Kamloops Art Gallery

Click for more information and events for Kamloops Art Gallery

The Kamloops Art Gallery is a registered charity and not-for-profit society.

Incorporated in 1978, the Kamloops Art Gallery serves residents of and visitors to Kamloops (pop. 82,000) and the surrounding Thompson-Nicola Regional District (pop. 124,000) as well as national and international audiences.

In 1998, the KAG moved to a purpose-built civic building, designed by award-winning architects Peter Cardew and Nigel Baldwin, which also houses the Thompson-Nicola Regional District offices and the Kamloops branch of the TNRD Library System. The 20,853 square foot Gallery includes 4,500 square feet of exhibition space, an admissions/store area, two multipurpose studio/workshop/lecture rooms, a packing and acclimatization area, the collection storage vault with an adjoining workroom and, on a mezzanine above, administration and curatorial offices along with a research library. In 2006, the KAG was designated a Category “A” institution under the Cultural Property Export and Import Act.

The Gallery’s annual attendance has ranged between 24,000 and 37,000 over the last five years. It enjoys a national reputation for its touring exhibitions and publications and has developed relationships with national and international artists, curators, critics and scholars. The KAG is also well respected for its exhibitions, events and educational and public programs through activities organized and presented in the community and region involving both contemporary and historical art. Its collection as of December 2012 consists of 2,700 works that primarily reflect the Gallery’s exhibition history. In 2005, the KAG co-commissioned with the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Canada’s participation in the 51st Venice Biennale with the work of Rebecca Belmore.

Governed by a Board of Trustees, the KAG maintains an effective organizational structure that includes a Management Team led by the executive director, a Program Team led by the curator and a Development Team led by the manager of operations. Teams meet monthly to report, evaluate, problem solve and plan.

Vision

The Kamloops Art Gallery brings art, artists and communities together.

Mandate/Mission

The Kamloops Art Gallery is the principal gallery in the Southern Interior of British Columbia supporting contemporary and historical visual arts and practices on a local, national and international level. The KAG acknowledges art to be an essential part of the human experience in nurturing a healthy society. As a leading cultural institution, the KAG is an integral part of the fabric that draws intellectual, social and economic opportunities to our province and to our region.

The Kamloops Art Gallery fosters enjoyment of and interest in the visual arts by researching, developing and producing exhibitions, publications and programs that engage, challenge and inform its various audiences. The Gallery also oversees the development and preservation of a permanent collection that includes regional, national and international art in all media. It also strives to create rewarding opportunities for visual arts professionals and the public.

Guiding Principles

  • Committed to art, artists and audiences
  • Collaborative, respectful and ethical
  • Tolerant, inclusive and diverse
  • Relevant to local and regional communities
  • Striving for excellence
  • Fiscally responsible
  • Sustainable


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