ELYSHA REI
  • home
  • gallery
    • paper cuts >
      • Past Wrongs Future Choices residency
      • 余白の美: Yohaku no bi (the beauty of empty space)
      • paper cut series
      • paper cut installations
    • public art >
      • Wilston Village Precinct 2020
      • Milton Patterns 2019
      • Brisbane Street Art Festival 2019
      • Window of Worship 2019
      • The River's Embrace 2018
      • Cathedral Square 2017
      • William Jolly Bridge 2017
      • First Coat 2017
      • Grand Central Culture Wall 2017
      • Traffic Signal Box 2016
      • Vibrant Laneways 2016
      • BrisAsia Festival 2016
      • UnFramed, Coolum 2015
      • Thailand Paste-Ups 2014
      • Real People Real Stories 2013
      • Animals with Attitude 2012
    • portraits >
      • portrait drawings
      • portrait paintings
  • about
    • about
    • contact

Past Wrongs Future Choices 
Artist Residency Feb - Apr 2023

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a new direction of work is being investigated where the materiality of paper and its connection to paper records and historical documents, are playing a role in the creative process and conceptual development of the work.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.

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • home
  • gallery
    • paper cuts >
      • Past Wrongs Future Choices residency
      • 余白の美: Yohaku no bi (the beauty of empty space)
      • paper cut series
      • paper cut installations
    • public art >
      • Wilston Village Precinct 2020
      • Milton Patterns 2019
      • Brisbane Street Art Festival 2019
      • Window of Worship 2019
      • The River's Embrace 2018
      • Cathedral Square 2017
      • William Jolly Bridge 2017
      • First Coat 2017
      • Grand Central Culture Wall 2017
      • Traffic Signal Box 2016
      • Vibrant Laneways 2016
      • BrisAsia Festival 2016
      • UnFramed, Coolum 2015
      • Thailand Paste-Ups 2014
      • Real People Real Stories 2013
      • Animals with Attitude 2012
    • portraits >
      • portrait drawings
      • portrait paintings
  • about
    • about
    • contact