For many artists, living with their early creative efforts can feel like a burden: Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, and even Michelangelo destroyed works they were later unhappy with. But Canal Cheong Jagerroos (b. 1968, China) has transformed her own artistic history into something new with Floating Island, an adaptive, immersive space filled with works from throughout her decades-long career, all displayed mingled together. 

Raised in Macau and now living in Helsinki, Jagerroos uses art as a means of understanding trans-cultural identity. The artist frequently experiments with traditions of both Eastern and Western art—sometimes breaking Chinese symbols into Modernist color blocks, other times merging Chinese ink painting with Western printmaking techniques. She aims to create a synthesized style that the artist calls a “futuristic language of her own.”

Floating Island is intended as a reckoning with the creative process and also a conduit between the past and the future. Between paintings and swathes of fabric, the artist installs lights and mirrors to create a kind of imaginary dream state that allows visitors to enter a state of reverie.

Originally installed at Tranter-Sinni Gallery in Miami, the bold, colorful installation is now traveling throughout the United States and will soon be on view at the Doral Contemporary Art Museum in Miami, Florida, starting in March. Check out the images below.

Artist Canal Cheong Jagerroos.

Canal Cheong Jagerroos, Floating Island. Courtesy of the artist.

Canal Cheong Jagerroos in her studio. Photo by Sabrina Jagerroos. Courtesy of the artist.

Installation view Floating Island – Beyond Arctic (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Korundi Rovaniemi Art Museum. Photo by Sari Tenni.

Installation view of Floating Island: Realm of Wonder (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Tranter-Sinni Gallery.

Canal Cheong Jagerroos, Floating Island: Utopia. Courtesy of the artist and Jyväskylä Art Museum.