(Photo credit: Adam Donnelly).

By Stephanie Swensrude

ASIAN HERITAGE MONTH

Celebrate Asian Heritage Month at Kamloops Museum and Archives and Kamloops Art Gallery

May 11, 2022 | 4:20 PM

KAMLOOPS — May is Asian Heritage Month. There are two exhibitions open in Kamloops that showcase Asian artists and community.

The latest show at the Kamloops Art Gallery (KAG) is Here Elsewhere Other Hauntings, a multimedia installation exploring the artist Jin-me Yoon’s experience as an Asian immigrant.

“She was really looking at questions about her own identity as a Canadian who was born in Korea, and her family lives in Canada, and these questions of where she fits in this landscape,” said KAG curator Charo Neville. “When she was working in Banff on residency, often she would be greeted as if she was a Japanese tourist.”

Neville hopes the photography, videography and projection work will be eye-opening for viewers.

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“With all our exhibitions what we try to do is offer a place to consider other peoples perspectives, so it’s timely that this coincides with Asian Heritage Month for sure,” she said.

Here Elsewhere Other Hauntings will run until July 2 at KAG.

Next, head to Kamloops Museum and Archives (KMA) for the last chance to catch another celebration of Asian heritage, Collective Memories: Japanese Canadian Reflections.

Curator Craig Willms reached out to members of the Kamloops Japanese Canadian Association and asked them to share their memories of life in Kamloops.

“Instead of taking a traditional museological approach, we’d like to just really have community voices. Your voice is important, so let’s get this down, let’s write these things down before we forget,” said Willms.

The exhibits features memories and objects that capture the voices of the Japanese Canadian community.

For sports lovers, there’s a section dedicated to judo, hockey and baseball, with memorabilia from Kamloops resident and baseball player Kaye Kaminishi.

The Canadian government sent most Japanese-Canadians to internment camps during the Second World War. Speaking about this history can be painful, says Willms.

“A lot of the history wasn’t really spoken of, people [were] trying to move past it and pretend it wasn’t there.”

“I think a lot of that still really lingers — it’s hard for people to really come out and speak,” he said.

Collective Memories is open until Saturday May 28 at KMA.