asenseofplace

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Pacific Artists: Yuki Kihara

from WIKI: 

Shigeyuki (Yuki) Kihara is a contemporary visual and performance artist and the first New Zealander to hold a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Titled Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs, the exhibition opened from 7 October 2008 to 1 February 2009. Kihara's self-portrait photographs in the exhibitions included nudes in poses that portrayed colonial images of Polynesian people as sexual objects. Much of Kihara's work challenges cultural stereotypes and dominant norms of sexuality and gender found across the globe. Kihara is also a fa'afafine, the third gender of Samoa. Born in Samoa, Kihara's mother is Samoan and their father Japanese. Kihara immigrated to Wellington, New Zealand at the age of fifteen to further their studies.They trained in fashion design at Wellington Polytech (now Massey University). In 1995, while still a student, Kihara's Graffiti Dress – Bombacific was purchased by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa)  Kihara's exhibition Teuanoa'i: Adorn to Excess was composed of twenty six t-shirts that took large corporations' logos and "[reappropriated them] to subvert the system of power, which governs the lives of Indigenous peoples today. The work also reflect the pride, angst and frustration amongst Pacific island youth living in an urban environment, which is what I was when I first started making them back in 1996."

Taema ma tilafaiga; goddesses of tatau 2004

Fa’afafine: in the manner of a woman 2005 

Culture for Sale 2012

Siva in motion 2012

After Tsunami Galu Afi, Lalomanu 2013. C-type print.

Study of a Samoan Savage 2015

First Impressions: Paul Gauguin 2018

Samoa no uta, A song about Samoa 2019–2023 

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Coast Australia

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CATs

My mother called me up earlier this morning, while I was at work. She was also at work, as I could hear her punching in door codes to get into the locker.

Hurriedly, she mentioned that my dad when to see the doctor the other day. He has been sick for over a month, but he didn’t want to go to the doctor to get checked. He has always been a little stubborn when it comes to his health, but I am glad that this time, he decided that he needed to go.

After his visit, my mom told me that they will be doing some other tests on him - doing xrays and cat scans to figure out what is happening in his body. Apparently, they found a tumor somewhere in his abdomen, and it looks like there might be something going on with his liver too. He will be getting a cat scan today at 3:40pm to learn more about this.

I called my dad after I spoke with my mom, but not right away. Thoughts were entering my head, about legacy and life, about sickness and health, and wondered what would happen if the doctors found out something more serious. A couple of years ago, my mom had a tumor in her ovaries - a rather large one, the size of a cantaloupe, according to the doctors. Luckily, it was a benign tumor, and it was extracted successfully, and she made a full recovery. I thought about that when I was thinking about my dad. He has always been strong - both my parents actually - and felt that he would be alright.

But I couldn’t help but think, what if he doesn’t?

I remember a conversation with someone, about elders in indigenous communities. That when someone passes away, a library disappears.

I thought about all the things that my dad might know, that he has experienced in his life. I couldn’t help but think too, that he is my direct link to being Chamorro - that he has this wealth of knowledge that I haven’t even bothered to ask to learn from.

I thought about him fishing, and standing on the reefs, waiting for a bite on the rod and reel he fixed and made himself. Will he miss doing that? Will he get a chance to do that again in his life?

I thought about him making shrimp and crab traps, and exploring the jungle to find the best places to put them. He never taught me how to do it, but I wonder if he still remembers.

I thought about the plants he would plant, the home he tried to build for his family, and the stories he had from his life - many of which I do not know.

A while back, I asked him to share a story about his time working at a construction company, where he ended up seeing a large octopus with his friends on day. I ended up recording that conversation, because I wanted to remember it. We were in the airport parking lot, waiting to pick up my mom from a trip she took.

As we sat there, I just remember feeling grateful that he was sharing with me about his life - one that I really did not know much about. We haven’t had the best relationship over the years, but it has gotten better ever since he stopped drinking.

After getting off the phone with my mom, I thought about this moment, and about the moments that will come in the future, knowing that his body isn’t the most healthy.

I thought about recording stories with him, just sitting down and having him share about his life, about him being Chamorro, about fishing and living off the land.

But I also thought about the tone of these conversations - that they are happening because of the chance that he might not be with us for very long. That death makes us realize how little time we have on this earth.

I spoke to my dad after thinking about all of this - he sounded hopeful, and asked for prayers, which is something that I have not heard from him in a while. He told he that he will be having some more tests to figure out what is going on. And that he will be going in for a scan today.

I know he sounded a little worried, but I assured him that Seattle has the best doctors in the country, so he is in good hands. But I know it can still be scary, not knowing what is going on.

Right now, he is at home, with his cat, and I hope that he is able to find some rest in it all. I don’t know what else to say right now, but I am hoping for the best. And know that tomorrow is always another day.

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“How artist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila made a statement by vanishing into the streets” notes

‘Uhila is one of Auckland’s most intriguing and gifted artists. He first entered the public consciousness with his 2014 Walters Prize live performance Mo‘ui tukuhausia (“to be absolutely stranded, or to be left destitute and friendless”), in which he lived homeless for three months around central Auckland. The work was a redux of a shorter performance he made in 2012 at Pakuranga’s Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, well before the city’s homelessness crisis became a daily conversation. 

Things weren’t much better for him within the art world. Before his Walters Prize breakthrough, he was depressed and convinced nobody understood his work; ‘Uhila, whose parents are Tongan, grew up in Ponsonby, but had decided to move to Tonga with his wife and daughter. The plan was to never come back. His wife wanted to study theology there. His goal was to reconnect with the world around him – to try and get well again. “Before we left, the family challenged us, saying, ‘Why are you going back to Tonga? Why are you going backwards?’” he says. “But you’ve got to go back to go forwards. The future is the past.” 

‘Uhila – who lives in Māngere, makes next to nothing from his art and works nights at Lion to support his family – is one of those men. But he’s also keen to point out that his work stretches beyond socio-political commentary. When I ask him what really drives his thinking, he laughs. “Wasting time,” he says.

He elaborates with a complex explanation of “maumau-taimi”, a Tongan concept of time that he says is different to the Western, linear sense of how the hours pass. “It’s like, we’re sitting here and we see someone across the road, and he looks like he’s wasting his time,” he says. “But we don’t even know who he is and we’re making judgements. It’s that perspective that I’m trying to address. It’s not to cause tension, but it’s the awareness of how we judge people sometimes. For me, I need to create that understanding: don’t judge me, don’t see me as useless or as this person wasting time.

“It’s a philosophical way of thinking,” he continues. “Doing the homeless piece, my own time kind of left. You’ve got high tide, low tide, daylight, nighttime, you’ve got traffic at eight o’clock and five o’clock. Five in the morning is when the cleaners come. People become a shadow of time; they’re moving while I stay still. Everything repeats. Life and art aren’t separate. They’re connected.”

This is the crucial point: ‘Uhila’s profound inventiveness is based on a conceptual shift for his audiences, forcing them to move from the idea of “looking at” to “being with”. And that’s still the case when he isn’t literally present. Think, for example, of everything you project onto his absent body when you imagine him living on the streets – all your empathy, all your fears (both of and for him), all your prejudices.

I ask him where he thinks it’s all headed. He pauses before he answers. “I like the fresh smell of coffee. The smell of existence. The present. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. At the moment, what I’ve got in mind is to just live life. Being honest in what you do is not telling someone else’s story. That’s what the work is about.”

http://www.noted.co.nz/culture/arts/how-artist-kalisolaite-uhila-made-a-statement-by-vanishing-into-the-streets/#.WOsE2S_uvRo.twitter

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Teardrops that Wound

In my work, I use a symbolic image of the human tragedy of the A-bomb droped on Hiroshima, the city where I grew up. The work is a direct response to the tragedy of the past, but the past I depict always wants to remember the present.”

This overscale sculpture of Little Boy references both Hiroshima and the unfolding nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011: to make it, Kawano “...collected old kimonos from Fukushima and again stitched the sculpture together with my hair, this time, melding my DNA - and its memories - with the ungoing/unfolding bodily fear of downwinders [there].” - Yukio Kawano

“I create moments. I like photographys ability to do that.”

Nagati uses tableau (”living picture) photography to meticulously construct narratives about modern nuclear development. For each photograph, Nagatani “directed’ scenes using plastic miniature models and figures, cardboard cut-outs, photographs and props hung from rafter sets against large scale scene-setting photographic murals to real-life locations. The resulting scenes wove visible elements of each location or event with hidden or underreported aspect. - Patrick Nagatani

“The capacity to unite through art is a weapon that everyone can carry to break down walls and build bridges.”

Dang’s suspended installation Bombs Away takes the ugliness of bombs and conflates it with the strange beauty of pathogenic organisms. Dang explores how microbes can be used both as a vital source for living things, and to create weapons of mass destruction. The piece asserts that science is not agnostic when mixed with an intent to annihilate.” - Thomas Dang

“In our contemporary day and age, there is an emerging need for dialogue and understanding, especially between disparate groups that stand on opposing sides. The alteration of these toy soldiers from holding weapons to holding and doing mundane things, acknowledges the humanity and life of the individual.”

His work flips the narrative from one of aggression to domesticity; it challenges the script of the stoic fearless masculine warrior and transforms it into the mundane, thus “completing their narrative and fleshing out their humanity as characters.” - Noa Batle

“In my fiction, I depict conflict because conflict engages the ‘problem-solving mind’, and forces us to as ‘What would I do, in a similar predicament?”

In Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History, writer Phong Nguyen reimagines historical events in which these icons of history made a different choice. War gives way to peace; destruction to enlightenment. - Phong Nguyen

“I use a balance of abstract and representational forms in order to sever the connection between shape and meaning...so that [the viewer] becomes complicit in the art.”

Her work Break into Blossom references the chapter “Einstein saves Hiroshima.” It evokes memory and “the dissolving boundaries of waking life and dreams.” The undetonated bomb is half sunken and surrounded by fallen cherry blossoms. Like the written words from which it was inspired, the pieces suggests what could have been a wildly different outcome to the 1945 event. - Sarah Nguyen

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No-Mindedness is “A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.” What he means is that one lets the mind think what it thinks without the interference by the separate thinking or ego within oneself.

So long as it thinks what it wants, there is absolutely no effort in letting it go; and the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker. There is nothing to try to do, for whatever comes up moment by moment is accepted, including nonacceptance.

No mindedness is then not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked. It is a mind immune to emotional influences.

“Like this river, everything is flowing on ceaselessly without cessation or standing still.”

No mindedness is employing the whole mind as we use the eyes when we rest them upon various objects but make no special effort to take anything in. Chuang-tzu, the disciple of Lao-Tzu, stated:

“The baby looks at things all day without winking, that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. he goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene.”

-from the book Bruce Lee: Artist Of Life

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"Colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism. A poison [is] distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds towards savagery."

-Aimé Césaire, 1955, Discourse on Colonialism

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Ga’mamokkat: One who likes to walk

Her name was Marian Dootz.

We didn’t know her real name, but that is what we called her. She used to walk around the village everyday, sometimes on sidewalks, sometimes on the asphalt road, where cars would swerve around her to get by.

She wore the same thing everyday - a black loose mumu with red hibiscus flowers, and well worn black zories that have seen better days.

We were told not to talk to her, and to head inside the house if you saw her coming. But she seemed harmless, and mostly sang to herself as she walked by.

We didn’t know where she lived, but we would see her almost everyday when we played on the streets. Sometimes, she would stop at people’s houses to ask for a cigarette. Or maybe even some spare change, if they had any. But mostly, she kept to herself, and just walked.

Then one day in middle school, we didn’t see her walking on the streets. She wasn’t on the sidewalks or at people’s houses asking for a cigarette. We didn’t see the bright red flowers on her dress in the distance, or her softly singing to herself as she walked by.

We didn’t know where she went, and we were afraid to ask our grandparents where she went. But we hoped that she was able to get to where she wanted  too, and maybe, just maybe, able to take a rest.

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Babak Golkar:

Through a variety of forms, including drawing, print, ceramics, sculpture and installation, Babak Golkar has developed a form-based dialectical investigation into human conditions of contemporary time.

Exploring the physical position of the body in relationship to form, the physical points of reference, stance and spacial relationships, which subsequently echo a historical, cultural, political stance of mind.

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I went to his talk last night, at Glass Box Gallery in SODO. I was struck by his philosophy of investigation, of connecting modernists ideas to contemporary culture. He doesn’t necessarily have a specific medium - again, dabbling in a variety to help with his study of the world. One of his projects that I was most struck by was his creation of an pseudo opium den, an installation that looks at trade as an idea for an exhibition titled “Common Ground”. To him, trade was what related us all - products, ideas, stories.

In the installation, he created a standing shelf, one that was inspired by a floor plan of an artist that he admired. On it, he displayed ceramic pots.

As I was listening to him, I was reminded of my home back on Guam, one that my grandfather built. He built it for his children, a place where then his grandchildren ended up staying as well. This was my childhood home. I spent 18 years there, walking over creaky wooden floor boards, spending time on the roof gazing at the stars, watching my grandmother and mother cook in the kitchen, and sleeping in a room painted in a random assortment of images that my dad and his friends would draw when they were high. These were my memories of this place, a place that is now changed. My uncle lives there now, and he hasn’t been able to care for it like others had in the past.

When I saw the shelf, I was drawn to the idea of making one of my own, one based on the floor plan of my childhood home. Displayed in its various areas, I want to put pieces of each room on it, as a homage to the life of the place. Concrete chunks, floor tile, pieces of the wall - whatever I am able to find. The shelf, then, will be filled with the physical remnant of the home, in honor and remembrance of the hands that created and care for it all these years. It will be an echo of something, captured in visual form.

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The act of remembering

My colleague was telling me about her weekend. She went to a Seder this past Saturday, one that she has been going for the past 20 years. I haven’t been to a Seder before, but as she was recounting her experience with it, it reminded me of the importance of remembering.

In a Seder, each food has a story, a reason why it is on the table. Each dish has a chance to be told, with song, story or poetry.

Seders have been done for 3000 years, and is a time to remember the past, to remember history, and to look towards the future.

Stories are shared, memories are remembered, all in the hopes of continuing something. Each family has a different way to celebrate - some are traditional while others incorporate new stories, new ways that life has changed and evolved.

One example is about an orange. In the middle of the table and various types of food that will be eaten, which each being a symbol of something - obstacles triumphs, reflections. Oranges are not part of a Seder, however, my colleagues friends added one to theirs, in response to a rabbi who mentioned that women should not be rabbis, just like oranges should not be on a Seder table. Now there is an orange on their table.

Like any story, it can grow and change. What is important is the intention behind it.

There is also a moment in the Seder when part of the food is hidden, and until it is found, then the ceremony cannot be completed. The idea behind it, is that nothing is ever lost when you remember and have the intention to go an find it.

This past weekend, the group found a piece of that food from three years ago. During that Seder, someone went into labor so all attention was focused on the new life that was coming into the world. But even though it wasn’t found three years ago, it was still found.

This act of remembering, through food, and stories, makes me think about what are the ways we remember in our own lives, the way we make space for the past but also look towards to the future. How do we honor something but also keep moving forward, not just for ourselves, but for everyone after us?

For myself, it is through art, through photographs, through sculptures. But it is also through listening. Listening is as important as remembering. And I hope that I remember that.