Zadie Xa: Weaving Ocean, Myth, and Diaspora

• An artist who listens closely to seashells in the dark, tuning into the calls of whales and the forgotten songs of ancestors.
• At the heart of Western contemporary art, she weaves together Korean shamanism with the layered complexities of diasporic identity.
• Through multisensory installations blending painting, sculpture, and sound, she invites us to reconsider the relationships between humans and nature, memory and oblivion.

Stepping into an exhibition by Zadie Xa (Korean name Cha Yu-mi), visitors cease to be passive observers viewing art merely with their eyes. Suspended from the ceiling is Ghost (2025), a chandelier-like sculpture crafted from over a thousand brass bells. Evoking the spiral form of a conch shell, the work draws inspiration from ritual brass bells (muryeong) used in Korean shamanism and coastal wind chimes, resonant and chiming in response to touch. Walking beneath it, one steps out of everyday perception and into an unfamiliar, dreamlike realm. Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1983 and based in London, the Korean-Canadian artist has garnered international acclaim for articulating her cultural roots, marine ecologies, and the diasporic experience through a distinct visual language. Her solo exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery and nomination as a finalist for the prestigious 2025 Turner Prize attest to her growing recognition within the global art world.

What makes her work resonate so deeply? A crucial element is how she translates the loss, anxiety, and cultural dislocation inherent to migration and diasporic life into an immersive spatial experience spanning both sight and sound. Vivid paintings and sculptures harmonize with whispers and acoustic compositions reminiscent of Korean shamanic rites, turning the gallery into a resonant narrative environment. Leaning close to seashell-shaped speakers, layered acoustic currents unfold: ocean swells, wind, whale whistles, and the rhythmic pulses of Morse code. As familiar sounds of the natural world intertwine with cryptic signals, viewers are prompted to look beyond visual forms and contemplate the intricate relations among sound, memory, humans, and nature. Her work becomes an effort to recover forgotten voices—and an inquiry into what we have lost and what we must remember.

Her practice cannot easily be categorized into conventional mediums like painting or sculpture alone. Traversing two- and three-dimensional spaces, Xa combines sound, performance, textile art, and video to construct the entire exhibition space into a single narrative universe. This approach might well be called a "Multisensory Narrative Installation"—not a formal genre defined by the artist herself, but an apt descriptor of her evocative methodology. Images and stories break out of the canvas to fill the physical room, transforming viewers from external onlookers into participants within that world. The meaning of the work lies not just in visible forms, but emerges as audiences navigate the space, listen to sonic landscapes, and summon their own memories.

If one were to give her practice a defining moniker, "a sea shaman mending memory" feels remarkably fitting. Bridging Korean shamanic imagination, mythic deities, and marine ecosystems, her work reimagines connections between severed memories and beings. Figures from Korean mythology, such as Princess Bari (Bari Gongju) and Grandmother Mago (Magohalmi), serve as crucial keys to entering her practice. In particular, Princess Bari, venerated in Korean shamanism as the guide of departed souls into the afterlife, allows Xa to visualize tales bridging life, death, and the spiritual world. Furthermore, reminiscent of bojagi (traditional Korean wrapping cloths) and patchwork quilts pieced together from disparate scraps of fabric, she stitches together the sense of place of the Pacific Northwest, Korean folklore, and fragmented diasporic experiences. Indeed, her paintings frequently employ patchwork compositions inspired by traditional Korean fabric-piecing and quilting techniques. As a result, distinct cultures and memories coalesce into new narratives without being subsumed into one another.

It is equally compelling how her Korean heritage and ecological concerns intertwine throughout her work, informed by her upbringing in Canada. Her background as a Korean Canadian is a foundational lens through which to interpret her art. Where different cultures and memories intersect, identity reveals itself not as a fixed origin or singular allegiance, but as an ongoing process of reinterpretation and relational discovery. The environmental and cultural contexts of the Pacific Northwest, including Vancouver, alongside her fascination with marine life, directly inform this exploration. Her 2021 work The Word for Water Is Whale offers a compelling parallel between the creator goddess Magohalmi and the matriarchal female orca. Juxtaposing Magohalmi and the orca reveals shared threads: maternal nurture, the transmission of generational wisdom, and the matriarchal stewardship of community. This is not to claim the two figures are identical, but rather exemplifies Xa's practice of bridging disparate cultures and ecosystems to generate new layers of meaning. Linking these disparate cultural memories is less an attempt to nostalgically reclaim distant ancestral roots than an ongoing inquiry into how those roots can converse with our contemporary lives.

Engaging with her art naturally brings to mind resonances with other artistic traditions. Her sweeping imagination and dismantling of the boundary between reality and fantasy evoke the Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch. Yet the emotional resonance and symbolism of their worlds diverge significantly. While Bosch portrayed intricate moral landscapes of human vice, damnation, and Christian dogma, Xa explores how we might embrace alterity through Korean shamanic sensibilities, matriarchal narratives, and kinship with non-human life. In Xa's universe, the sea and its whales are never mere backdrops for human drama; they are neither passive objects of surveillance nor resources for exploitation, but sentient beings that hold memories and forge relationships alongside humans. This distinction illustrates how expansive art's vision of ecological community and coexistence can be.

Echoes can also be traced to Surrealist painters Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, as well as author Ursula K. Le Guin. Each, in their own way, challenged established orders of reality, envisioning alternate realms through mysticism, spirituality, and kinship with the more-than-human. Zadie Xa similarly destabilizes anthropocentric assumptions and rigid cultural boundaries. These parallels do not denote direct imitation; rather, they highlight how creative visionaries across mediums carve out space for beings and lived experiences that dominant frameworks fail to explain.

Another noteworthy dimension of Xa's practice is her collaborative process. Working alongside longtime collaborator Benito Mayor Vallejo, as well as dancers and musicians, she resists the notion of art as a purely solitary endeavor. Together, the duo has collaborated across installation, painting, video, and performance; works such as Ghost and their installation at the 2025 Sharjah Biennial emerged from this shared creative dialogue. The convergence of different sensibilities and lived experiences to shape a single work is essential to her artistic cosmos.

Viewed in this light, her art resonates with the concept of Hospitality. Hospitality here extends far beyond welcoming someone with warmth; it is the act of holding space where different entities can coexist without erasing their differences. While not a formal doctrine asserted by the artist herself, this lens offers a vital critical framework. Xa's installations invite audiences to step outside familiar horizons, encouraging them to imagine the senses and memories of other beings. Her major exhibitions at prestigious venues such as the Whitechapel Gallery and the global attention garnered by her 2025 Turner Prize nomination demonstrate how these poignant inquiries resonate far beyond personal diaspora experience to connect with broader global audiences.

Leaving Zadie Xa's exhibition, one might feel compelled to turn back for a lingering glance. While the hanging brass bells and installations summoning ocean memories remain anchored in place, something within our sensory awareness has subtly shifted. Perhaps the sounds echoing through the seashells do not merely restore forgotten voices, but invite us to listen anew to all that we have long tuned out. Gathering scattered, fragmented memories and weaving them into new mythologies, Xa's practice transcends cultural geographies connecting Korea, Canada, and the UK, prompting us to re-examine the bonds between humans and nature, past and present. If the moniker "a diasporic shaman mending ocean memories" fits her so aptly, it is not because she magically erases all wounds, but because she uses art to imagine a world where severed lives and spirits can finally meet again.