Artist Statement
As a third generation Nikkei Australian, my arts practice investigates transcultural identity that is imbued with the ambivalence of pride in Japanese cultural heritage, intergenerational remnants of pain from racial discrimination, and the experience of inhabiting a third space where ‘the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences’[1]. Expanding upon a paper cutting practice of 18 years, a new direction of work is being investigated where the materiality of paper and its connection to paper records and historical documents, are playing a role in the creative process and conceptual development of the work. Using archival records as a starting point for mapping Japanese Australian history, my work intertwines documented histories, oral histories and cultural remnants that archive silent narratives of a Japanese-Australian migration and Nikkei identity in Australia in hand-cut paper artworks.
During an artist residency in Canada from February-April 2023, my research has expanded to contextual these histories within a global narrative of Nikkei communities across allied countries in Canada, Brazil and the US. Drawing upon parallel histories of internment, incarceration, dispossession and deportation of citizens with Japanese ancestry, my research in Japanese Australian history during the 1940s and 1950s contributes to an international conversation in the Past Wrongs Future Choices global research project, which is in its second of seven years, funded by the Canadian government. My role as an artist and scholar in this project is in creating artistic and written responses of these histories in Australia, that will be disseminated to a global audience through project partners in archives, museums, galleries, and organisations with Nikkei affiliations.
[1] Bhabha, H.K., 1994. The location of culture, Routledge, London, p. 218.
During an artist residency in Canada from February-April 2023, my research has expanded to contextual these histories within a global narrative of Nikkei communities across allied countries in Canada, Brazil and the US. Drawing upon parallel histories of internment, incarceration, dispossession and deportation of citizens with Japanese ancestry, my research in Japanese Australian history during the 1940s and 1950s contributes to an international conversation in the Past Wrongs Future Choices global research project, which is in its second of seven years, funded by the Canadian government. My role as an artist and scholar in this project is in creating artistic and written responses of these histories in Australia, that will be disseminated to a global audience through project partners in archives, museums, galleries, and organisations with Nikkei affiliations.
[1] Bhabha, H.K., 1994. The location of culture, Routledge, London, p. 218.