joannachiayulin@gmail.com
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Documentation by dulub studio
consists of three individual bodies of work, including:
- The Weight that Holds
2025
Acrylic medium, inkjet print pigment, invisible sewing thread, aluminum tube, steel wire and textile.
Arrangements according to the site,
8 sets of works, individually measure approx.260 x 80-250 cm.
- From Afar
2025
Two-channel sound installation with text projection.
12’35”
- Merely Watching
2025
Single-channel video, wooden box.
9’00”
- As the Crow Flies, an interdisciplinary exploration of 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.
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The work is selected to - be part of Vårutstillingen,
- Fotogalleriet, Norway, in
- 2026.
The starting point comes from visiting some of the homes of my childhood, where I could smell the dust gathering. The absence of someone no longer living there seemed to fade, yet at the same time their presence grew stronger. From this, I wanted to draw out the textile elements from images I gathered over the past three years, to hold onto the feeling of remembering before the dust and the absence—like the afternoon sun through light curtains, when reality blurs and time feels suspended. It is about longing, grief, and reimagining: a eulogy to a certain place and time.
- Inside the images there are:
a dead sparrow at the doorstep; wallpaper faded and patched with packing tape by my grandmother; curtains pulled up only after afternoon naps; white geometric fabric drifting against barred windows when I was a child; my grandmother’s bed; the sound of curtains brushing the tile floor in a summer breeze; and the rhythm of curtains opening and closing with the sun. In front of that curtain stands a home decoration made most likely from a taxidermied ostrich-leg. Finally, in the afternoon light: the window of the Taichung home that will soon be left behind, with the purple curtain from my room.
The textile works are collaged with fabrics I collected, searching for patterns that resembled those in the photographs. On their edges, I sewed fragments of my reworked Norwegian residence documents, serving as a side note: if not for migration, both places might be home, though never at the same time.
Accompanying the physical installation is a sound piece with text projection, composed of fragmented voices spoken in Mandarin, English, and Norwegian. Layered like a rehearsal, these shifting words trace the changes of home, memory, and language, an ongoing effort to imagine, reimagine, and practice another possible reality.
The single-channel video contains footage from my last visit, recorded two weeks before a typhoon destroyed much of the apartment’s interior. These recordings became the final portrait of spaces that can no longer be seen, like a security camera watching the past, able only to witness.
Curated by
Huang Yi-Hsuan.
Curatorial text
“As the crow flies”
written by Huang Yi-Hsuan
“As the crow flies” refers to the shortest path between two points—unlike roads shaped by terrain and detours, birds fly straight toward their destination. In Joanna Chia-yu Lin’s work, this idea of distance becomes a way to explore the unclear relationships between place of birth, migration, and return after years away from home. What is home? The exhibition As the Crow Flies reflects on the physical distances created by everyday life, the quiet pain of homesickness in an Asian cultural context, and a mourning for the fragile nature of images, memories, and mediums. Each time Lin returns, she is met with the thickening smell of dust, gecko droppings, and spiderwebs—scented signs of time's buildup, disappearance, and loss.
Since 2020, Lin has developed a process combining photography and hand-transferred image techniques. She shoots on film negatives, digitally prints the images, then carefully layers transparent acrylic over them. Once dry, she washes away the paper fibers, leaving behind a thick yet translucent sheet of dried paint, embedded with inkjet pigments—plastic-like, yet fragile. Unlike traditional photographic prints, this transformation turns the image from flat to spatial; from untouchable to something you can see and feel—floating between memory and material, between clarity and blur. If the development of an image reveals absence, Lin’s manual process becomes both a way of returning to memories and accepting what has been lost. More than “representation,” it is a way of making something appear again—where distant dreams of home, faded memories, and missing bodies meet once more, not clearly, but closely.
The central installation The Weight that Holds uses textiles that feel like household fabrics from memory as the base, onto which large-scale transferred acrylic images of a blurry domestic structure are collaged. Draped like curtains across the space, the work forms a large, multi-surfaced presence. Along the edge, Lin has stitched in her residency permits from her seven years in Norway. These marks—like weights or tags—pull against the unclear images of her place of origin, hinting at the immigrant’s reality: both places are home, and at the same time, neither truly is.
In From Afar, Lin’s voice shifts between Mandarin, English, and Norwegian, showing the mixed feelings of distance across different cultures. “Afar” is no longer just about physical space—it’s a state of mind, a constant pull toward something you know you can’t reach. Merely Watching records quiet, empty rooms in Lin’s family home. The images, like security footage, quietly catch small changes in the space. Two weeks after filming, a typhoon hit and damaged the house, turning the recordings into an accidental record of what came before—and showing the powerlessness of being far away.
The photographic sculpture series 2023.02–2024.02–2024.06 spans three visits home. Lin unknowingly took photos of the same scenes again and again, creating fragments that visually connect but are separated by time. As her daily life shifted to another place, her way of looking at her family home changed too—from someone remembering on the inside, to someone observing from the outside, like a tourist stepping into a place once called “home.”
Lin’s process mirrors this feeling: brushing on layer after layer of gel, only to peel away the paper underneath—like pulling herself away from her place of origin. In doing so, she brings herself to a new, temporary shelter—maybe unstable, but still liveable. It is within this tension—the longest of short distances—that she searches for a sense of belonging.
Documentation of other parts of the exhibition
Production Team
Curator: Huang Yi-Hsuan
Visual Design: Zining Lin
Guest Speaker for the artist’s talk: Ming-Jiun Tsai (Deputy Director, Asia University Museum of Modern Art)
Lighting Design: LighTemp
Installation Support: Gene Hope Art Co., Ltd.
Exhibition Documentation: dulub studio
Sound Post-production: Edvard Ødegaard
Sound System Installation: Lin Shih-An
Consultant: Chiang Ting-Wen
Glitch
Brand Director: Lai Shih-Han
Art Director: Chang Wen-Hao
Executive Assistant: Chang Yu-Bang, Su Kodak