Jin-me Yoon facts for kids

Jin-Me Yoon was born in 1960 in South Korea. She is a Canadian artist who is known around the world. She moved to Canada when she was eight years old. Jin-Me Yoon is a modern visual artist. She uses performance, photography, and video in her art. Her work explores big ideas about who we are, where we come from, and how we fit into the world. This includes topics like citizenship, culture, and history.

Yoon's art often uses humor and clever comparisons to look at complex subjects. Some of her important works include Souvenirs of the Self (1991). This photo series questioned common ideas about what it means to be Canadian. Another work, A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996), showed 67 portraits of Korean Canadians from Vancouver. They stood in front of paintings by famous Canadian artists Lawren S. Harris and Emily Carr. Her video art piece, The Dreaming Collective Knows No History (2006), explored how our bodies, cities, and history are connected.

Jin-Me Yoon studied at several universities. She earned a degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1985. She then studied art at Emily Carr College of Art (1990) and Concordia University (1992). Today, she lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. She also teaches art as a professor at Simon Fraser University.

Early Life and Art Journey

Jin-Me Yoon was born in Seoul, South Korea. Her parents were Chung Soon Chin and Myung Choong Yoon. In 1966, her father moved to Vancouver to study medicine. The rest of the family joined him in 1968. This was after Canada changed its immigration rules that used to be unfair based on race.

Yoon went to primary school in East Vancouver. During this time, she became very interested in the photos of products she saw in magazines. These included National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, and luxury magazines. She found these in her father's waiting room. When she was 12, Yoon started making collages using these images. In high school, she learned about art history. She visited temples in Korea and read art books her parents collected. These books introduced her to artists like Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp.

In 1978, Yoon started at the University of British Columbia. However, she felt that the art lessons focused too much on European, white, male artists. After getting her psychology degree, she went to art school. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr College of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in Vancouver. Later, she completed her Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal.

What Jin-Me Yoon's Art Explores

Jin-Me Yoon's artworks often use photography, video, and performance. She uses these to question how identity is shaped by history and society.

In 1991, she created Souvenirs of the Self. This work looked at how we see ourselves and others, especially through images of the Canadian landscape used in tourism. In 1998, her installation between departure and arrival showed a change in her work. She started using video and sound, not just photos, to explore deeper ideas like language and consciousness.

Important themes in her art include memory, history, identity, and nationhood. Her project Unbidden (2004) used multiple videos and photos. It explored how people feel when they move or are displaced due to war or other global events. Her work Long View (2017) combines photos and video. It deals with identity, place, history, and watching others. This piece shows Yoon's family digging in the sand on Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

Turning Time (2022) featured 18 digital screens. They showed different dancers performing their own versions of the Korean Crane dance. This work highlighted ideas of being connected, people living away from their home countries, the future, and strength.

In 2009, she was a finalist for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Grange Prize. In 2013, she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. In 2022, she won the Scotiabank Photography Award. In 2025, she received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for her artistic achievements.

Her recent video art explores different cities, especially in South Korea and Japan. She often turns the view of tall city buildings and people on their side. This makes viewers feel like they are dreaming and immersed in the modern city. Jin-Me Yoon has become well-known internationally over the last 15 years.

Selected Exhibitions

• Jin-me-yoon: Honouring a long view, National Gallery of Canada (2024)
• About Time, Vancouver Art Gallery (2022)
• In/Flux: Art of Korean Diaspora, Museum of Vancouver (2018–19)
• Long View, for LandMarks 2017/Repères 2017
• Spectral Tides (solo), Nanaimo Art Gallery (2017)
• Photography in Canada 1960–2000, National Gallery of Canada (2017)
• Surveying: An Uncertain Landscape, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown (2015)
• Passages through Phantasmagoria, Centre Culturel Canadien/Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2008)
• Jin-me Yoon: Unbidden (solo), organized by Kamloops Art Gallery (2004), and shown at Oakville Galleries (2005), Mount St. Vincent University Art Gallery (2005), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2006–07), and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2007)
• Crossings, National Gallery of Canada (1998)
• between departure and arrival, Western Front Gallery, Vancouver (1997)

Art Collections

Jin-Me Yoon's art can be found in many important collections. These include the Vancouver Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, National Gallery of Canada, Kamloops Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Walter Phillips Gallery.