I Am YEG Arts: Yang Lim

As an independent curator, Yang Lim encourages audiences to step outside their usual frames of reference and see things a little bit differently. Through exhibitions that explore themes of heritage, memory, language, agency, and the contemporary Asian experience, Yang hopes to be a catalyst for conversation, while challenging the homogenization of diverse experiences. As digital platforms continue to gain popularity, Yang continues to push curatorial boundaries and explore new ways to bring the traditional gallery experience to online audiences around the world. This week’s ​“I Am YEG Arts” story focuses on Yang Lim.

Tell us about your connection to Edmonton and what keeps you living and working here.

Initially I moved here for educational reasons, but I also have family here, so that’s a big reason for me to stay in Edmonton. But also, after I came here, I volunteered with various artistic cultural organisations around town over the years and I liked the vibe of the city as well. I think that’s certainly a contributing factor for me staying here.

I know that Edmonton has been called ​“Festival City”. That’s the thing that struck me about Edmonton – there are all these festivals and things happening, literally back-to-back during certain times of the year too. That’s certainly an attractive aspect about Edmonton. And of course, in the winter months there are still things happening that cater to every taste.

You recently wrapped the online exhibit: Shifting Articulations of Asian-ness in Contemporary Canada. Tell us more about the experience of curating such a large online exhibition.

This was an interesting challenge in part because, up until that point, most of what I had been doing in terms of curating were conventional on-site, in-person exhibitions. There was a learning curve when I went through this project, but it’s been a good learning experience as there are several behind-the-scenes components that I didn’t necessarily think about before for the online platform. For example, you aren’t dealing with things such as a physical space – in an in-person exhibition, you have your square footage of how much space you have and you also have to navigate that space in terms of putting up the artwork, deciding how it’s going to be displayed, and so on. You don’t have that necessarily for an online exhibition. But at the same time, you’re still dealing with the spatial issue in a sense, except that it’s in the context of a website. So, there are similar concerns, but manifested in a different form. I would ask questions such as: What’s the aesthetic? What impression do I want to give people when they first come to the website? What might attract them to stick around and explore?

The other interesting thing I had to deal with was the different mediums from the participating artists, so I had to consider how to best represent them on my exhibit website. It was an ongoing collaboration that involved getting input from the artists about what they wanted to see and how they preferred their work to be shown, while working with the constraints of an online medium. There was ongoing communication between me and the artists, and also the website designer I was working with, so after much back and forth throughout the whole process it worked out well. I think, overall, the artists were quite pleased with what came out of it.

I also wanted to ensure people could access the website and navigate around easily, regardless of how they viewed it. In a conventional, physical exhibition you just go to the space, but in an online platform someone might look at it on their laptop, phone, desktop computer, or tablet, so I didn’t want to inadvertently exclude anyone from accessing it. That aspect was taken care of quite well through the website design process as the exhibition website was viewable in all sorts of devices, which was good to see.

Were there any surprise learnings, challenges, or opportunities in curating an online exhibition?

Throughout this process of building this exhibition, I was thinking about what I could do in an online platform that is not possible in an onsite exhibition. For example, one of the artists displayed some illustrations, and we added browsing functionality so that you could click and zoom in to the image. Another artist had a video that was embedded, so you could then click it and show it full screen. These are the sorts of things that were part of my thinking process around how I could take advantage of in this online medium, which also allows people to customise their viewing experience.

At the same time, there are downsides to any platform. One of the things with the online platform is that, admittedly, you don’t have the in-person interaction that you may have, say when you go in a gallery space and have that spontaneous conversation with other people. As a result, the online context does have its pros and cons that arise from using it to exhibit art.

What was it about these artists’ works that led you to select this group of artists for the exhibition? 

These artists’ works had intriguing points of connection, so I thought that it would be worthwhile to exhibit them together because they all deal with ideas pertaining to heritage, memory, language, and agency. They were exploring these concepts in ways that connected with their gender identities as well, either directly or indirectly. For example, one artist’s video in the exhibition deals with domestic labour and matrilineal inheritance. Another artist explores their racialized queer identity by revisiting memorable places in their hometown. And a few other works in this exhibit dealt with articulation and language. When you think about language — the mother tongue, native tongue — there’s that connotation of passing on one’s language through the generations.

I thought that it was important to draw attention to their work in a cohesive way because there are more and more artists from diverse backgrounds who are producing very interesting work across Canada. There’s still more that can be done to make their work more visible, including those produced by artists of Asian backgrounds.

What does community mean to you, and where do you find it?

At a basic level, I think of community in terms of where I am geographically located, which is in Edmonton. But I would include, in that idea of ​“community,” people who are supportive of what I do but who might not live here, such as those people whom I’ve established networks and connections with. In a sense I’m seeing community as something that is virtual or hybrid. It’s about having that space where I can feel my work is appreciated or making an impact in some way or contributing to the artistic discourse.

Community, for me, is also about the potential audience that I may have for my work. It’s both sides – the community as a people who are supportive, giving that context to produce, but also the flip side, those who are receiving what you’re producing, and engaging them in the conversation. I think there are different levels of understanding around what community is. It can range from the micro-specific context to something broader as well.

Tell us a little about what you’re currently working on or hoping to explore next.

Currently, I’m working on Cinematic Disruptions: Asian Diasporic Communities in Motion, which is also an online exhibition but focuses specifically on film and video. It’s in the same vein as my previous exhibitions as it’ll highlight the experiences and perspectives of Asian communities. Thinking historically about how Asian communities have been represented in film and television, it has certainly improved over the years. You see shows like Kim’s Convenience, Fresh Off the Boat, Crazy Rich Asians, to name a few. We’re seeing more representations of people from these communities, which is good to see, but I always look in terms of what more could be done? In some ways, it’s still lacking. An example of this would be fantasy and science fiction. How are Asian people represented there?

This exhibition draws together some people whose work is representing these experiences and perspectives in thought-provoking ways. Hopefully, they will entice people to think, get them to step outside what they are accustomed to viewing, and maybe intrigue them to explore some more. In fact, one of the works I’ve included in the exhibition is a science fiction short film. There’s also another one that could be considered a surreal film representing the immigrant experience, but it’s done in a very unusual way. It defies categorization in some ways, and I think that’s a good thing as it’s testing the boundaries of how we think Asian communities are depicted.

I’d be curious to know about peoples’ thoughts on these films. What drew me to them was that they’re different from what I’ve seen before. They are working within recognizable genres and styles – there’s science fiction, drama, more reflective pieces, and documentaries. My approach in this exhibition is similar to what I’ve done before, where I’m drawing together different genres, because I think there are interesting connections you can make when you group works together rather than if you’re viewing them separately.

What excites you most about the YEG arts scene right now?

There are increasingly interesting artistic interventions and other creative things happening in Edmonton. I think part of this is that bigger cities may have an oversaturation of organizations and groups, while Edmonton doesn’t seem to have that same oversaturation. Because of this, I think that this opens the door for interesting creative practices and interventions, which you might not necessarily get if you’re living in a place that is overly centralized or dominated by certain institutions. It’s nice to see creative manifestations happening in places you might not have seen a decade or two ago. The city’s pop-up events and activities add to its creative flavour as well.

Looking towards the future, the pandemic has affected everyone’s lives in a lot of ways, but one positive development is that you see businesses, the arts, and other sectors that are taking advantage of the online platform to connect and produce content. I’m interested to see where that goes in terms of what potential exists for the arts to leverage online platforms. We would still have our in-person events, exhibits, and activities of course — we still want those to continue! – but we can also incorporate that online dimension to bring in traditional audiences that are interested in creative output in Edmonton, and also attract new audiences. Someone may not necessarily think of visiting an art gallery, but perhaps they might see something online, either deliberately or accidentally. Sometimes accidents are a good thing. I think there’s interesting potential there to attract people to the arts that can feed into increased audiences to physical locations too. Hopefully, what I’m doing in terms of these online exhibits are feeding into that and getting people to think about new, interesting ways that can supplement what we do already with in-person activities, talks, and exhibits to build our audiences.

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along! Click here for updates on Yang’s new exhibition.

About Yang Lim

Yang Lim is an independent curator based in Edmonton, AB, whose practice engages with diverse perspectives around timely topics in contemporary society and artists who work out of a variety of geographical, cultural, and discursive contexts. He is also interested in innovative approaches to curating that can broaden the public reach of art.

Yang’s recent exhibition Shifting Articulations of Asian-ness in Contemporary Canada broadened the conversation around ​“Asian-ness” and highlighted diverse perspectives within Canada’s Asian communities. His next exhibition, Cinematic Disruptions — Asian Diasporic Communities in Motion, broadens the conversation around ​“Asian-ness” and complicates what it means to be part of the Asian diaspora. It features eleven creators of Asian heritage who work with the film and video mediums. Their works convey diverse and complex representations of Asian diasporic communities’ experiences that complicate existing representations in mainstream and popular culture. The exhibition runs January 26 to March 11.