Comprising a set of six colour postcards, Souvenirs of the Self depict the artist posed across five tourist sites in Banff, Alberta. In these locations—Banff Park Museum, Banff Spring Hotel, a memorial for Chinese railway laborers, Lake Louise, and Banff Avenue— Yoon’s rigid posture, set against a backdrop of seemingly tranquil sceneries, emphasizes the entanglements of Western landscape imagery, tourism, and the disquieting histories of dispossession and exclusions upon which Canadian nationalism rests.
Jin-me Yoon, Souvenirs of the Self (Postcard Series), 1991, printed postcards. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2015.
Title
Souvenirs of the Self (Postcard Series)
Artist
Jin-me Yoon
Year
1991
Medium
Printed postcards
Collection
SFU Art Collection
Donor
Gift of the artist
Year Acquired
2015
Artists
Jin-me Yoon lives in Vancouver and has been a visual arts faculty member at SFU since 1992. She is a locally, nationally and internationally recognized artist who has been a critical voice in the development of a discourse around identity in visual art practices. She received her BA from the University of British Columbia in 1985, her BFA from Emily Carr College of Art in 1990, and her MFA from Concordia University in 1992. Over the last three decades, Yoon’s work has been presented internationally in hundreds of exhibitions, and she has mentored many students over the years while teaching at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. In 2018, she was elected as a Fellow into the Royal Society of Canada in 2018; and in 2022, she won the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award. She was a recipient of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2025.