Slow Forms: Site-Specific Installation Art 2026 by Mi-Jeong Lee
The inauguration of the Montreal Asian International Film Festival (MAiFF) was graced by Mi-Jeong Lee’s series of site-specific installations, unified under the concept of Slow Forms and woven throughout the festival from opening to closing. Lee’s work invited emerging artists as collaborators — passionate hands who gave their labour behind the scenes, driven by nothing but a love of art. Working with paper, textiles, recycled materials, and living edible plants, the installations explored the theme of tangibility: soil, body, story.
The first series of Slow Forms presented three works-in-progress, hinting at what is to come in the year ahead:
- Little Hands, Big Mess: Kids’ Creative Playground Zone (in collaboration with Sarah-Maude Lemieux)
- Worn Again (in collaboration with Samantha Chan) — a plastic-free backdrop photo zone brought to life through Lee’s recycled hanbok
- Tender Passage: Green Runway — replacing the conventional perception of the red carpet, this living passage from the entrance to the MAiFF space invited all visitors and keepers to walk among seedling plants and feel their liveness: their growth, their living, and their passing in real time. Each of the 18 seedling plants bore the name of a current MAiFF staff member. Yet as with all living forms, not all survived the full six weeks of the festival; only 7 plants grew stronger and more resilient by the close. The planned second exhibition could not take place — and this, too, was part of the work: a process of care, embrace, and attentiveness to all living forms.
These seedlings symbolize a living portrait of the hundreds of young people who have given their hands and breath to sustain the life and spirit of Arts East-West, a non-profit media arts organization that has endured for over 30 years in Montreal, Quebec.
The second series of Slow Forms — exploring tangibility through space and food — will be presented this fall.
Moving Image 