Call for Curators Exhibition 3 - <Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home>
2022-2023 Call for Curators Exhibition 3 -
Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home
The Korean Culture & Information Service (KOCIS), the Embassy of Korea and the Korean Cultural Centre Canada (KCC) are pleased to present Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home at the KCC Gallery from April 27 to June 9.
Earlier in 2022, the KCC called for curators to submit new exhibition proposals to celebrate our solid friendly relationship between Korea and Canada to mark the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the two countries in 2023. The call also aimed to open up critical dialogues between Korean and Canadian curators to envision deeper connectivity and sustainable collaboration between the two countries. Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home is one of the four selected curatorial proposals.
Co-curated by Vicki Sung-yeon Kwon (Associate Curator of Korean Art & Culture, Royal Ontario Museum) and Hong Kal (Associate Professor of Art History, York University), Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home is an exhibition featuring new projects by Jin-me Yoon, Diana Yoo, and Yoon Jin Jung.
A surge of interest in recent years in recognizing and addressing historical injustices towards Indigenous and marginalized communities has challenged the Canadian national identity, which has long been misrepresented through the myth of an unclaimed land waiting to be developed. Concurrently, the experiences of Asian migrants and their descendants as visual minorities have further complicated the national identity of Canada. Facing these moments and discourses, the exhibition Reimagining Places: Land, Store, Home presents new projects by three Korean Canadian artists who delve into their multifaceted, layered experiences of living on colonized land as migrants of colour, through the themes of land, store, and home.
Jin-me Yoon’s single-channel video Long Time So Long, made during the pandemic, extends the artist’s oeuvre of performance for the camera in charged landscapes. Set on unceded Musqueam land with a troubled history of colonial and environmental destruction, the video shows a masked figure walking into a shifting estuarian landscape, creating a sense of disorientation and isolation that is at once political and psychic, real and surreal, as well as archaic and futuristic.
Diana Yoo’s photographic series Inconveniences is a nuanced representation of convenience stores, a type of business that many Korean immigrants operate in Canada, as sites of resistance to the capitalism that erases “inconvenient” histories related to racialized minorities and their labour. By exposing the unsettling aesthetics of capitalist culture, Yoo’s works reflect on the relationships among labour and migration.
Yoon Jin Jung’s multimedia works speak about displacement. Her photographic works connect Koreans displaced through forced labour during the Japanese colonial period to those who have lost their home today. The installations, using a tent and augmented reality, invite audience participation to reflect on and take action to help the vulnerable who have lost their housing due to war and disaster, as well as economic inequality.
Together, the three artists explore intricate histories and traumatic memories from transnational and transgenerational perspectives. By presenting these works, the exhibition invites the viewers to engage with critical conversations on colonialism, capitalism, racism, and multiculturalism, challenging the concepts of colonial claims to land and of capitalist ownership, and envisioning ways of being and cohabiting.
Related Events
A series of free online and offline events will take place throughout the run of the exhibition. Pre-registration for these events is available through the links below.
● Thursday, April 27, 4:30–7:00 p.m.: Vernissage and the artists' remarks
@ the KCC Gallery (in-person event)
● Monday, May 1, 4:00–5:30 p.m.: Conversation with artists, curators, and audience,
with Jin-me Yoon, Diana Yoo, Yoon Jin Jung, Vicki Kwon, and Hong Kal.
@ Online on ZOOM
● Tuesday, May 30, 12:00–1:00 p.m.: Curator Conversations
on “The Korean Diaspora in Canada at the Decolonial Turn.”
with Vicki Kwon, Diana Yoo, and Christine Kim (Associate Professor, University of British Columbia)
@ Online on ZOOM, co-presented with the Royal Ontario Museum.
(Pre-registration for this events will be available soon via the Royal Ontario Museum website.)
For more information, please contact:
The Korean Cultural Centre Canada
50 Elgin Street, Unit 101, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 1L4, Canada
Tel: 1-613-233-8008 E-mail: canada@korea.kr
Further information on the Call for Curators 2022-2023 project is available. Click the images below to see each project.
● The Results of the Jury's Selection
● Call for Curators Exhibition 1: Entanglements (Tea, Maybe) by Paola Poletto and
The fourth and final exhibition <Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape> is to open at the KCC Gallery on July 17, 2023.
- attached file
