2023.02–2024.02–2024.06
2024/2025

Acrylic medium, inkjet print pigment, magnets, plexiglass mirrors, UV varnish and
hand-bant plexiglass mount with a laser-engraved work number
&
Curtains and spoken words.

Arrangememnts according to the site, 211 pieces.

As part of As the Crow Flies



2023.02–2024.02–2024.06 forms the starting point of As the Crow Flies.

This body of work includes around 200 postcard-sized photo-sculptures in varying forms. By presenting scenes once part of daily life in the format of postcards, objects light enough to carry for a “visitor” like myself, it develops a language that feels both familiar and estranged. These memories flicker like camera flashes: brief, sharp, and uncertain.

As the Crow Flies expands from this series into an interdisciplinary installation, blending photography, painting, textiles, and sound. Drawing on the phrase “as the crow flies,” which refers to the most direct path between two points, the work builds on 2023 series From Far Away. It traces the shifting meanings of place and home, exploring the emotional and temporal dimensions of distance and the experience of moving between worlds.

At its core are the more than 200 soft photographic sculptures, made through a self-developed technique combining photography, painting, textiles, and industrial materials. Their contrasting textures create an interplay between softness and structure. A soundscape of spoken words in Norwegian, together with textile backdrops, extends the installation’s narrative, inviting viewers to move through the work and reflect on the connections between its mediums.

 
*As the Crow Flies was reviewed on Kunstkritikk:
︎︎︎ Bilder på Flukt, by Stian Gabrielsen.

* This work was exhibited at Tenthaus, Oslo, in 2025.


*The exhibition is supported by Tenthaus, Kunstsentrene i Norge (KiN), Kulturrådet and Norsk Fotografisk Fond (Nofofo, Forbundet Frie Fotografer).

Exhibition text

As the Crow Flies by Joanna Chia-yu Lin is an installation, blending sculpture, sound, and textiles to create a space where memory, identity, and cultural displacement intertwine. Rooted in the artist’s personal journey between Taiwan and Norway, the exhibition explores the complex emotional landscapes of migration, inviting viewers into a fragmented narrative of longing, belonging, and the spaces in between.

The works are presented in fragmented storytelling, resembling flashbacks that echo both personal and collective memory. Like flashes of light, these photographic sculptures capture fragments of a memory—vivid yet fleeting, melancholic yet resonant. They confront us with their dual nature: we see them as both snapshots of a past life and as reflections of the universal human experience. This interplay asks us to consider our role as viewers: Who are we in relation to these memories? We do not belong in them, but we recognize them.

These are not necessarily our temples, not our Taiwan, but we understand them. We know homes—whether they exist in our lives or in the shadow of their absence. Joanna’s works challenge us to confront our own attachments, or lack thereof, through hers. They speak to a deep, shared knowledge of what homes mean, what they should mean, and the ache of being tethered to spaces and memories that may no longer exist in the same way.

The exhibition captures this tension through its form. The photographs, sculptural elements, and soundscape are fragmented and layered, never giving us the full picture but offering glimpses that guide us through a journey. The soft photographic sculptures, crafted with dried paints and industrial materials, embody the duality of fragility and permanence. Their scale and placement—ranging from intimate, low pieces to towering, distant forms—shift our perspectives, evoking moments of childhood and adulthood, closeness and separation. 

Curtains create barriers and frames, suggesting both the act of concealing and revealing. They transform the exhibition space into a physical metaphor for the emotional distance that migration creates. The soundscape—spoken memories in Norwegian—adds another layer, one of disconnection and translation, as language itself becomes a marker of identity and belonging.

In this memory exhibition, the flashbacks presented by Joanna are not complete narratives but fragments of her life. We encounter them as outsiders, yet their familiarity confronts us with our own histories and attachments. The interplay of perspectives—hers and ours—creates a dialogue, where we are simultaneously distant and intimate, estranged and connected.

Language, in As the Crow Flies, becomes more than a means of communication—it is a way of restructuring thoughts, knowledge, and memory. Spoken words in Norwegian, a language the artist has only recently learned, form a critical layer of the soundscape, reshaping the way memories are expressed and understood. Does the act of translating one’s history into a foreign language change its essence? Do these memories lose their sharpness, or does the unfamiliar tongue create distance that makes them hurt less?

These questions linger as the artist recounts family histories, transforming the deeply personal into something universal, making this a reflective journey that forces us to confront our attachments, and through it, we come to understand that the distance between memory and presence is one we all navigate.