Artist
Joanna Chia-yu Lin
As the Crow Flies
As the Crow Flies is an interdisciplinary project that explores memory, shifting identities and migration. Taking inspiration from the phrase "as the crow flies” which describes the shortest distance between two points, the project reflects on the emotional and temporal distances that shape our understanding of home. It is an ever-evolving work, continuously changing form depending on its context, expanding and contracting from large sculptural pieces to postcard-sized works.
I explore the fragmented nature of memory, where complexity of emotions coexist. I experiment with photography, painting, textiles, and sound to create a shifting, immersive space that reflects how moving in-between places reshapes personal histories. The work unfolds in layered, non-linear storytelling, evoking the way memories surface as flashes, vivid yet fleeting, personal yet universal.
As the Crow Flies features over 200 soft photographic sculptures, created through my self-developed image transfer technique that merges photography, painting, and industrial materials. These sculptural works contrast fragility and permanence, inviting a navigation between tactile and visual elements. As I begin incorporating sound and language into the project, a soundscape of spoken words in Norwegian threads through the installation, adding a layer of distance and translation that echoes the evolving nature of memory and identity.
By continuously testing new processes and deconstructing conventional material uses, I transform various materials and forms into vessels for memory. As the Crow Flies extends my exploration of materiality and interdisciplinary narratives, adapting to different spaces and formats as it continues to take on new forms.
Through explorative materializations of their artform from Joanna Chia-yu Lin's soft photographic sculptures; to Jošt Dolinšek's site specific photographies printed with fine sand on black surfaces; to aluminum explosives of clandestine devices of the dark room by Nazanin Raissi; and Louise Sinaga Helmfrid's astute portrayals, they invoke undercurrent positionalities within photographic art and visual culture production.
For the second year, Fotogalleriet has engaged curators, writers, researchers from the whole Nordic region as jury constituted by Curator at Röda Sten Konsthall Amila Puzić; Liisa-Ravna Rinborg, writer, researcher and curator currently situated at The Munch Museum; Samuel Girma, a curator, activist and cultural producer from Malmø; Nkule Mbaso, Director of Fotogalleriet and Miki Gebrelul, Curator and Head of Exhibitions at Fotogalleriet.
