Jinny Yu Solo Exhibition < I Like My Countries and My Countries Like Me>

January 24 – April 30, 2019,  KCC Gallery

Vernissage: Thursday, January 24, 6pm, KCC Gallery 

The Korean Cultural Centre presents I Like My Countries and My Countries Like Me, an exhibition by Jinny Yu, one of Canada’s leading artists and educators. This exhibition is a critical contemplation on the state of Korean-Canadians living in 21st-century Canada.

Born in Seoul, Jinny Yu immigrated to Canada with her family when she was a child. Her family settled in Montreal where she learned to speak French and English. Later, she also acquired the Italian language while working and living in Italy. Jinny Yu states “all languages and cultures in which I have lived feel sometimes homely and sometimes foreign. My experiences have led me to feel foreign everywhere […] and I affirm this as a desirable state of being.”

Her capacity to engage and embrace every environment surrounding herself in her new worlds is reflected in I Like My Countries and My Countries Like Me.

Considering the relatively brief Korean immigration history in Canada, the Korean Cultural Centre is pleased to witness Korean-Canadian artists and thinkers thriving in the mainstream Canadian art scene. All efforts to define an identity by first generation Korean-Canadian artists, such as Kye-yeon Son and Jin-me Yoon, have led to a new wave of artists engaged in profound introspection. Such an example is the mid-career artist Jinny Yu.

The Korean Cultural Centre continues to connect Canada and Korea through art and culture and what Jinny Yu has achieved for the past two decades in Canada and abroad is a great precursor to what the KCC is eager to realize in Canada throughout its various programs in the coming years.

About the Artist

Jinny Yu’s work grows out of an inquiry into the medium of painting as a means of trying to understand the world around us. Denaturalizing the medium and questioning its authority, 

her project Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating? was exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale.

It subsequently toured to The Rooms and was acquired by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Her work has been shown widely in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, UK and the US, including: Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin, 2016); Richmond Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2015); Produzentengalerie plan.d. (Düsseldorf, 2014); Ottawa Art Gallery (2014); Pulse New York and Miami Beach (2011, 2014); Ottawa Art Gallery (2014); St. Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax, 2013); Kunst Doc Art Gallery (Seoul, 2012); ISCP Gallery (New York, 2011); McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton, 2011); Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, 2011); Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa, 2009); Sotheby’s Conduit Street Gallery (London, 2007); Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice, 2006); and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (Kyoto, 2004). Yu has been an artist in residence at the KIAC, Dawson City; ISCP New York; Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Studios; and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Yu, an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, was awarded the Mid-Career Artist Award by Ottawa Arts Council in 2013; Laura Ciruls Painting Award from Ontario Arts Foundation in 2012; and was a finalist for the Pulse New York Prize in 2011 and 2014.

Exhibition Inquiry: Moonsun Choi (moonsunchoi@korea.kr/ 613-233-8008  ext.212)