尤物视频

An impressive photocollage spans the south fa莽ade of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. It is the work of , visual artist and professor at 尤物视频鈥檚 (SFU) School of the Contemporary Arts (SCA).

measures a massive 80 metres long by nine metres tall, and is a sequence of six photographs taken on Wickaninnish Beach in Pacific Rim National Park on the ancestral lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples. The images include a lone figure dressed in black standing against the horizon line, digging into the sandy shore, standing inside a hole, and looking through binoculars at her interlocutors.  

Situated in a complex geopolitical and historical setting marked by colonial displacement, churches, military monuments and more, the mural sees Yoon fixing her gaze on Canada鈥檚 Parliament Buildings and the United States Embassy, and represents her lived experience of the Korean Canadian diaspora.

The work was selected by the National Gallery as part of the series , and challenges viewers to reconsider their connections to place and history. It will be featured at the gallery until March 2026.

Honouring a Long View is just one of Yoon鈥檚 many significant artistic accomplishments. For more than three decades her work has been presented internationally in hundreds of exhibitions. She has mentored countless students in contemporary art and theory at SFU鈥檚 SCA.

In 2018, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canada鈥檚 highest academic honour, and in 2022, she won the prestigious .

Yoon was recently named a recipient of the  for Artistic Achievement, Canada鈥檚 highest honour of artistic excellence and outstanding contributions to visual and media arts.

We spoke to Professor Yoon about her work.

How do you hope viewers will engage with Honouring a long view? Are there hidden meanings that the observer should look for?

One thing I can say about Honoring a Long View is that it is public facing鈥攜ou don't have to go inside the gallery to see it. The audience is incidental, because the way I work the piece is scale, which allows different relationships to viewing depending on where you are. You can view it driving by, walking towards the gallery, walking on the street. I hope that it is visually engaging, so people look and say what is that? For those who don't normally go to galleries and museums, it is an open invitation to everybody to engage and say, what is this work about?

And everyone understands what a photographic image is in public space鈥攗sually it is advertising. The proliferation and the ubiquity of photographic images in our lives makes it accessible. However, the imagery itself engages viewers to slow down rather than speed up their meaning making, because there is nothing being sold, nothing that seems to be evident as the message.

And there are entry points to the work. For example, the very close up, huge binoculars is an image of someone looking. Like the old trick of the eyes鈥攚herever you go, those binoculars are going to follow you. It can suggest, bringing things that are far close鈥攁nd this thing is really close鈥攚hat is this about? So, I don't really have hidden messages, per se, but associational meanings and contextual meanings and meanings that are already embedded in the current context of culture, in a very mediated society. And I think those are like little doors that people can open in relation to their own personal histories and specific context, geopolitical or otherwise.

Honouring a Long View explores the concept of time as both personal and historical. How do you perceive time in your work, especially in relation to the land and its Indigenous histories?

Time for me is a major preoccupation. I think of time as vertical, as the past, the present and the future coexisting. What I am trying to do is expand the idea of time and different modalities of time. Being with time is different than measuring time with the clock or even with seasons, which are different as well. In a more nuanced sense, we can free ourselves of the perniciousness of measuring time as if it can be divided by quantifiable measures. Those ways of dividing time and the kind of bodies that are supposed to inhabit that time are very specific to historical conditions.

For example, if you think about Fordism or in terms of the worker clocking in, and now we just have to work all the time. Digital time also coincides with our way of having to be on all the time and in this kind of measurement of time. I would like to suggest that when we contemplate these things, as people who work at universities and people who think about history, time is of essential importance.

In terms of the question around land and Indigenous histories, think of how they say 鈥榯ime immemorial,鈥� which suggests a long past and a long presence with the land and a world view with a different understanding of time. I am not saying that Indigenous people are not contemporary, but more to imply that Canada as a nation state is very young when you pull back into this idea of time immemorial.

Your work often involves engaging with specific sites and their histories. How do you decide which locations to focus on, and what role does the site play in your creative process?

Broadly speaking, I look to sites that are damaged, sites that have had some sort of harm or traumatic instances and often centered around militarism, colonialism, imperialism or tourism, that kind of masks those conditions.

When we look at Long Beach in Tofino, the site of Honouring a Long View, we do not see that it was a site for military practice during World War Two. Air Force bombs used for military practice killed a lot of life which washed up on shore. It really affected the local Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations. There is still unexploded ordinance. There are signs on Long Beach that say 鈥渄o not go past here.鈥� And of course, at that time, Japanese Canadians were interned, taken away from their livelihoods and their homes. This is a site of a lot of traumatic historical instances. However, when you look at the beautiful Pacific Ocean, it is so easy just to take it all in and say wow, this is so magnificent, the open ocean. Somehow, we can kind of take it in鈥攂ut we don't take it in鈥攚e do not fully embody the sense of what happened here. But this in no way takes the power of the sea itself away.

And it continues on. We are currently in increased conditions of war. Militarism is something that has preoccupied me, because I grew up in post-war Korea trying to build itself鈥攁 lot of it was flattened, a lot of it was rubble. And before, Korea was colonized by Japan. Coming to Canada and to the West Coast鈥攚hich I love鈥擨 feel fortunate that we have relations with Indigenous peoples to learn from, as well as the land, seas and mountains. Reckoning with colonial legacies in the present is imperative for the future.

I also do choose places where people and communities are engaged in some kind of hope making鈥攁nd I say hope making as a verb. It is an active way of people doing something in their own way, whatever that way is, to change the conditions for a better future, and I feel grateful to be in this part of the world, with the people and communities that I am learning from and inform my work. I have to say there is an intrinsic joy in the process of making.

Congratulations on the Governor General鈥檚 Award in Visual and Media Arts. What does earning this award mean to you?

I am really thrilled to receive the Governor General鈥檚 Award. It means a lot that I will meet Mary Simon, Canada鈥檚 first Inuit GG, it means a lot that a person of my background is recognized, as this was not always the case. It feels wonderful to stand alongside people, artists, who might be considered 鈥榯roublemakers.鈥� I am delighted and looking forward to taking it all in.

Now until March 2026 visit at the National Gallery of Canada.



Yoon's head shot/thumbnail photo credit: Jae Woo Kang

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