Jinny Yu created this painting installation after news of migration crises in the Mediterranean Sea and Bay of Bengal. It comprises a painted fabric space built to the interior dimensions of Venice’s San Ludovico Oratory and layered voices from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). Amid rhythmic swarms and silences, one can make out phrases such as “You don’t think there’s something going around, do you?” and “They’re frightening the children.” The surface of Yu’s painting is broken up with hundreds of thousands of black ink brushstrokes that evoke a threatening mass, circling at a distance. The abstracted marks and collaged sounds combine to arouse a range of emotions towards mass migration, an experience that realizes the social and political crux of this piece.

© Jinny Yu / CARCC Ottawa 2024