Sharyn Yuen: Suspended in Time

This series of photographic prints on handmade paper documents the artist’s trip to her ancestral village of Namcheng, China, in 1986 to gain insight into her family history. Each work documents a different stage of the journey, mirroring her parents’ own movement between Canada and China, before and after World War II. Exploring varying temporal and geographical relationships, they echo a family history involving marriage, familial separation, and eventual emigration to Canada, where the artist was born.

Titled Jook Kaak, referencing a bamboo knot and the idea of existing between two cultures, this series investigates joy, overwhelming emotion, and the importance of family in spite of distance. The works read almost as a short novel – an apt form for an artist who has worked extensively with papermaking. The textural quality of the paper, combined with applied imagery, emphasizes a sense of timelessness inherent in the series.

Though grounded in personal history, Yuen’s work reflects a diasporic experience that may resonate with many Canadians, including separation impacted by historical events, the complexity of family dynamics, and a kind of cultural suspension that provides no clear, simple answers. Previously shown in the group exhibitions Yellow Peril: New World Asians (1988) and Yellow Peril: Reconsidered (1991), both curated by Paul Wong, the historical distance from this series’ creation in 1980s Vancouver only seems to amplify these concerns in a contemporary context.