• Artist Project

Flower Blossoms | Chantal Jung

Aug 15, 2022
by Chantal Jung

This piece is in honour of my family.

Over the past few years, my mom and I have had lots of conversations about my grandma and all the things she used to do—being very craft-based—but never really getting the recognition she deserves for it. That is something I have seen and heard a lot, how women do crafts and it is never really seen as an art form. It’s not always regarded as something to cherish.

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In reality, these are pretty intense art forms that were never traditionally passed down to me. I included the picture of my grandma making bread because it is something I associate with going home and visiting family.
It’s also a form of craft and connects our family together, along with very distinct memories of Labrador. 

I added the portrait of my mom with the car because whenever she talks about Labrador, these are the stories that I hear from her about her 20s and 30s.

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The inukuluks are something we’ve been creating in our family for a while and something my mom enjoys making, they remind me of her. These figures also symbolize reclaiming something that I hope won’t become lost—there is a lot of talk about folks not making them anymore.

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The last image is of me, sewing these inukuluks, connecting our three generations.

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Broadly, this piece speaks to Indigenous futurisms and my hopes for the younger generations—that we will be able to reclaim our traditions but in a new way and be able to live freely and thrive without constraints. That is why I added the flowers: they symbolize our blooming and flourishing as Flowers women.



Currently based in San Jose, California, US, collage artist, video artist and zine creator Chantal Jung originally hails from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL. Jung first embarked on her artistic journey through an early discovery of collage art, which led to a series of collages in which she paired images of her friends alongside their favourite flowers. Flowers form a cornerstone of Jung’s artistic practice, a motif she considers to hold particular personal significance. Beyond her digital and analogue collage work, she is also an emerging video artist, with a music video credit to her name for singer-songwriter Black Belt Eagle Scout and the short stop-motion film Things You Know But Cannot Explain as part of the Bartow Project. As a zine creator, Jung is a member of the collective Indigenous Honeys who produce content as a collective and provide workshops in zine-making.


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This project was made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

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