Jihee Min: A Few Flaps to Belong

Inspired by a flock of migrating birds, Jihee Min uses devices made to mimic wings in her exhibition A Few Flaps to Belong. The work draws a parallel between the longing for flight and the desire to cope with a foreign land. Min, a graduate of OCAD U, had “a magical encounter where a flock of birds flew above me, so low to the ground that I noticed their flapping sound,” she says in her artist statement.

The flight-related works in the exhibition evoke a romantic notion of flying in relation to Min’s yearning for home and desire to belong. A Korea-born Canadian, she explores art as way of formulating a voice for an identity. She uses cyanotype, (an outdated camera-less photographic technique that produces deep cyan-blue prints) to create nostalgia as part of her ongoing struggle for grounding the Korean Diaspora within a Canadian identity.

Jihee Min’s website, here.