joannachiayulin@gmail.com
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Documentation by Tor S. Ulstein / Kunstdok
2025
Acrylic medium, inkjet print pigment, magnets, plexiglass, plexiglass mirrors and UV varnish.
Arrangements according to the site, 174 pieces. The majority of the works individually measure approx. 10.5 × 16 × 5 cm.
As the Crow Flies, a project looking into memory and shifting identities between places. The title, taken from the phrase "as the crow flies" (referring to the most direct path), reflects the emotional and temporal distances that influence the notion of home.
The images were taken during three brief visits, as referenced in the titles, to seven places I call “home.” They reflect how time and space are perceived differently when living between geographies. Although gathered over several years, all works were completed in 2025, compressing traces of presence and absence, and holding what remains before memory fades and the houses are gone.
The works are made using a self developed image transfer process. This time intensive method gives the surfaces a translucent, skin like quality, turning images into tactile and fragile remnants that form the personal archive.
This body of work is the beginning of applying sculptural elements in the series. Laser cut and engraved plexiglass strips and magnets hold the images in place, contrasting industrial structures with domestic image content. Some works are physically layered, reflecting repeated, unplanned returns and the delayed nature of analog photography, where images taken in Taiwan could not be fully seen until I returned to Norway. This time delay creates a gap in memory and becomes the reason for revisiting and for the layering of images.
Conversation partner
Mechu Rapela
(Tenthaus collective member)
Exhibition text
written by Mechu Rapela
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.
The work is made possible with thanks to:
Matilde Balatti
Fellesverkstedet
Jack Hughes
Jacky Jaan-yuan Kuo
Ebba Moi
Mariana Rapela
Mechu Rapela
Slekke
Tai Hsin-yu
Ida Uvaas
Edvard Ødegaard
and Tenthaus