Long Time So Long is both a political and psychic landscape as well as a real one set on unceded Musqueam territory known as Iona Beach Regional Park in Richmond, BC. Today, in addition to a sewage plant, Iona Island is home to a park and bird sanctuary, established following a political protest and reclamation project. Its history, though, is one of environmental ruination and colonial atrocity. Made during the pandemic, this surreal and uncanny video holds in tension an expression of sadness for the past as well as restrained hope for the future.

Draped in white – the funerary colour in Korean traditional culture – the figure wears 2 masks: one a mirrored surface that reflects the surrounding world, and the other a “hin saek”/white face with holes for eyes and three fluted orifices for a mouth. Alone and multiple, the figure walks out into the stark shifting estuarian landscape that is oil blackened, white and frozen and richly hued of blue-mauves as if ancient and futuristic at once. With a resonant haunting soundscape composed of percussive crackling, droning and human humming, the unreal drag of time and the distortion of existential isolation is amplified.