GALLERYtalk – Kiliii Yuyan: Thin Places

Join Kiliii Yuyan in Gallery A as he talks about his exhibition, Thin Places.

 

I will always remember those nights with the burning, glowing embrace of the fireflies. In the space around my body, they floated like a thousand miniature green-yellow lanterns, blazing long enough to be seen, but gone quickly enough to escape my cupped hands. It’s embedded in me to see the fireflies as spirit beings here. I’ve never met a person who hasn’t felt their otherworldly nature. Indeed, my Indigenous ancestors referred to wild creatures as ‘men in other shirts’. For animistic peoples, our world is inhabited by spirits, which only reveal themselves in particular circumstances or places. But somehow, I think, we all feel this regardless of where we come from. 

And that spot by the pond out in the summer darkness with the fireflies? That’s my quintessential thin place.