Sharyn Yuen’s series Jook Kaak 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 parent’s own movement between Canada and China, before and after World War II. Referencing a bamboo knot and the idea of existing between two cultures, Jook Kaak investigates joy, overwhelming emotion and the importance of family in spite of distance, reading almost as a short novel—an apt sensibility for an artist who has worked extensively with papermaking.
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, taut answers. The historical distance from this series’ creation in 1980’s Vancouver only seems to amplify these concerns in a contemporary context.
