Between Departure and Arrival was Yoon’s first video work, and marked her entry into a practice which began to explore duration, time, history, and memory through the poetics of displacement. The relationship between history and the present moment is underscored through her use of archival film, taken from British Columbia’s provincial archives. Juxtaposing clips of Asian immigrants in Canada’s history with footage of clouds, as if seen from an airplane window, the work examines the deep and difficult history of Asian immigrants in Canada. Created in 1997, the year of the Hong Kong handover to China and a period of rising anti-Asian sentiment focussed on “monster homes” and who had the naturalized right to own land, Between Departure and Arrival probed questions of belonging, migration, and the complexities of national identity.

- Ming Tiampo