This is the second part of Jinny Yu’s long-term project entitled Perpetual Guest in which the artist examines relations of identity and belonging in and around the boundaries of a territory. Locality is of tremendous importance in this research. At BoxoPROJECTS, the artist is researching history of land use, ownership and transfer in the region, and interviewing residents from her position of a settler on the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Algonquin nation (and currently a guest on the land of the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, the Cahuilla, and the Mojave Peoples), with anxiety of un-belonging as articulated by Eve Tuck, in her article “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor:” “Numerous scholars have observed that Indigeneity prompts multiple forms of settler anxiety, even if only because the presence of Indigenous peoples – who make a priori claims to land and ways of being – is a constant reminder that the settler colonial project is incomplete (Fanon, 1963; Vine Deloria, 1988; Grande, 2004; Bruyneel, 2007).”

As settlers who came uninvited, the artist believes it is her duty as a settler, to try to find a way to cohabitate with the Indigenous Peoples. Her research explores issues of site (colonial-settler history), community (trying to find a way for a harmonious co-habitation) and the environment (this may be the key aspect in finding something close to a solution.)

Please join us in person or on Zoom on Saturday, January 29 at 3pm for Jinny’s artist-talk to introduce her work and ideas to the community, and a discussion related to her initial findings. We hope to bring Jinny back to the area to present the artworks she makes in response to her time here.

About the Artist: Jinny Yu’s practice is an inquiry into the medium of painting as a means of trying to understand the world around us. Her work presented at the 56th Venice Biennale addresses themes about migration, which resonate with larger political concerns globally. Yu works simultaneously to scrutinize conventions and to explore new possibilities within the medium of painting, oscillating between the fields of the abstract painting and the object. Her work has been shown widely, including exhibitions in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, UK and USA.

Artist website: www.jinnyyu.com