Jin-Me Yoon Beyond Canadian Identity: Rethinking Land, Ecology, and Communities

Why It Matters

Yoon’s work forces Canadian institutions to confront settler‑colonial narratives, promoting a more inclusive, historically accurate national identity.

Key Takeaways

• Yun redefines Canadian identity through immigrant‑centered landscape photography.
• “Souvenirs of the Self” juxtaposes iconic symbols with Korean Canadian presence.
• “67 Portraits” confronts Group of Seven myth by inserting diaspora subjects.
• Performance and body become lenses for colonial history and memory.
• Works link Canadian‑Korean military ties, Indigenous land, and contemporary activism.

Summary

The Royal Ontario Museum hosted a presentation on Jin‑me Yoon, the Governor‑General’s Award‑winning Korean‑Canadian artist whose practice interrogates Canadian identity, land, ecology and community through photography, performance and video. Curators Vicki Kwan and Vtor Pavo highlighted how Yoon’s work reframes settler‑colonial narratives by inserting immigrant bodies into iconic national symbols.

Key works include the 1991 “Souvenirs of the Self” series—large‑scale postcards that place Yoon herself amid beavers, Greek statues and museum signage, prompting viewers to question who qualifies as Canadian. In 1996 she produced “67 Portraits,” a grid of Korean‑Canadian subjects positioned before Emily Carr and Lawren Harris landscapes; the number 67 references the 1967 lifting of racist immigration bans, directly challenging the Group of Seven’s myth of an empty wilderness.

Yoon’s later pieces, such as “Long View” and “The Dreaming Collective Knows No History,” employ her own body—crawling in a diving suit, low‑angle “worm’s‑eye” perspectives—to physically traverse histories of Korean and Canadian military involvement and to subvert top‑down narratives. Sound, site‑specific installations on Indigenous lands, and charitable collaborations (e.g., SNAP auction) further embed her practice in contemporary activism.

The presentation underscores the museum’s role in amplifying diverse perspectives, urging curators to reconsider collection practices and audiences to recognize Canada’s multicultural, contested histories. Yoon’s art demonstrates how visual culture can destabilize entrenched national myths and foster inclusive dialogue.

Original Description

Korean Canadian artist Jin-me Yoon, recipient of the 2025 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, has been a vital presence in the Canadian art scene since the early 1990s.

Her artworks challenge us to consider how Canadian identity has been shaped by travel photography, museums, and the legacy of the Group of Seven. How do these, often white colonial settler, notions of identity stand up in the face of Canada’s more diverse realities? What role can artists and museums play in sparking this kind of discourse across differences in heritage and lived experiences?

Her artworks address shared concerns of human and nonhuman living on this planet and invite us to reconsider how to create the possibilities for peaceful co-existence, embracing differences among diverse communities and generating positive discourse that uplifts, especially, younger generations.

This short talk explores ROM’s role in introducing Yoon’s work to diverse audiences, including Korean diasporic communities, LGBTQ2+ audiences, students, visitors, and academic researchers, and the potential for institutions like ROM to hold space for the complex conversations that inevitably arise.