Jenny Yujia Shi
施雨迦

Jenny Yujia Shi 施雨迦  is a Chinese Canadian visual artist based in Kjipuktuk. Growing up in a historic neighbourhood in the heart of Beijing, Shi was immersed in intergenerational teachings, childhood mischief, and folklore of ghosts and spirits until ​an urban renewal project​ flattened their neighbourhood, displacing local residents and connections.

In 2009, Shi ​began a ​fourteen-year​ immigration process transitioning from an international student to Canadian citizenship. From the moment Shi passed through the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) processing center at Toronto Pearson Airport, their lived experience became subject to various conditions, permissions, and restrictions. These parameters regulated Shi’s movements and activities within the country, shaping the opportunities they could access to establish a livelihood.

Channeling a state of being: ungrounded and unable to land, Shi explores themes of displacement, dispossession and diasporic longing through mixed media drawing, site-responsive installation, community-based research and handmade animation. Most recently, Shi has begun revisiting their personal immigration archive and childhood folk​lore to e​xamine place, memory and agency in the context of border crossing and migration.