The Image Centre kicks off new season with major exhibition by Korean-Canadian artist
Korean-born and Vancouver-based artist Jin-me Yoon is the winner of the 2022 Scotiabank Photography Award. Her photography, video and performances that span 30 years are part of The Image Centre’s spring/summer line-up. Jin-me Yoon, A Group of Sixty-Seven (detail), 1996, two grids of 67 framed chromogenic prints for a total of 134 prints and 1 name panel. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund. Courtesy of the artist
On April 29, TMU’s The Image Centre (external link) (IMC) will open their spring/summer season of exhibitions and programming, headlined by Korean-born Vancouver-based artist Jin-Me Yoon.
“We’re thrilled to be opening our spring/summer exhibitions, in particular Jin-me Yoon’s Scotiabank Photography Award exhibition, part of this year’s Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival,” said IMC Director Paul Roth.
The IMC’s exhibition brings together 30 years of Jin-me Yoon’s photography, video and performance exploring the construction of national and diasporic identities, including many new and never-before-seen works. Jin-me Yoon, Untitled 6 (Long Time So Long) (detail), 2022, inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist
Yoon is the winner of the 2022 Scotiabank Photography Award but it has been since the early 1990s that Yoon has used photography, video, and performance to situate her personal experience of migration in relation to unfolding historical, political and ecological conditions. In this major exhibition spanning the IMC’s Main Gallery and University Gallery, visitors can expect to see formative early series along with never-before-seen and new works by the artist.
“Through her multilayered art practice, Jin-me Yoon deftly maneuvers between past and present and reframes our understandings of the crucial issues of our day, including colonialism, militarization, displacement, and environmental destruction, while also alluding to different possibilities for the future,” said IMC Exhibitions Curator, Gaëlle Morel.
Jin-me Yoon, A Group of Sixty-Seven (detail), 1996, two grids of 67 framed chromogenic prints for a total of 134 prints and 1 name panel. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery,Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund. Courtesy of the artist
Highlights of the exhibition include A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996), a touchstone in the public articulation of Canadian identity and race. Formal portraits of 67 members of the Korean-Canadian community were taken by the artist in front of iconic Canadian landscape paintings by Lawren Harris and Emily Carr. The work also makes reference to 1967, Canada’s centenary and the year a revised Immigration Act established new standards for assessing potential immigrants.
Jin-me Yoon, Oasis 3 (Time New Again) (detail), 2010/2022, chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist
Never-before-seen photographs include the series Time New Again (2010/2022) in which the artist crawled on a moving platform through sites where she had inherited cultural, intellectual, and artistic traditions—in Seoul, Vienna, Vancouver, Beppu, Mexico City and Nagoya.
Jin-me Yoon, Hin Saek Piper 1 (Long Time So Long) (detail), 2022, inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist
In Long Time So Long (2022), a new series catalyzed by the pandemic, Yoon wears traditional Korean talchum masks that are fused with the characters of digital emojis, creating a satirical elegy to a broken world. In Pacific Flyaways (2022), Yoon photographs youth of Korean ancestry against a background of oil refineries, at a bird sanctuary on the unceded territories of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in a recouping of the traditional Korean crane dance.
An accompanying publication by Steidl celebrates the complex yet highly distilled photographs of this dynamic and thought-provoking artist.
Scotiabank Photography Award: Jin-me Yoon is organized by The Image Centre, presented by Scotiabank, in partnership with CONTACT. With additional support from Partners in Art, the Korean Cultural Centre, and Superframe.
More from The Image Centre this spring
Gerald McMaster & Ming Tiampo on Art in Canada Past and Future: A Conversation about Works by Iljuwas Bill Reid and Jin-me Yoon
Co-presented with Art Canada Institute
Tuesday, April 25, 2023 | 7 pm
George Ignatieff Theatre, 15 Devonshire Place, Toronto
Reserve your seat at events@aci-iac.ca
Special Exhibition Tour: Scotiabank Photography Award: Jin-me Yoon
Vicki Kwon, Associate Curator, Korean Art & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum
Wednesday, May 24, 2023 | 6 pm
Artist and Curator in Conversation
Jin-me Yoon with Euijung McGillis, Assistant Curator of Photographs Collection at the National Gallery of Canada
Wednesday, June 14, 2023 | 7 pm ET
Online via Zoom
Also on view are Jane Jin Kaisen: Braiding and Mending (external link) and Sharing the Frame: Photographic Objects from the Lorne Shields Historical Photograph Collection (1840–1970) (external link) . Visit theimagecentre.ca (external link) to learn more and plan your visit. Admission is always free.