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Hello Miya and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
I’m of mixed race, my mother is Japanese and my father is American, originally from the Ukraine. I was raised speaking Japanese and English and lived in Japan as well as in a redwood forest in Northern California. My work is informed by this multicultural experience. I’m interested in investigating interconnectivity and the things which connect all people.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?
I’ve always been inspired by Buddhism, I spent time in a Buddhist temple in Japan when I was a child. My grandfather was a Buddhist priest and Buddhist philosophy has always informed my work and approach to my art practice. I’m also inspired by the Japanese cultural respect and attention to nature. This was reiterated living in the redwood forest in Santa Cruz. I’m also inspired by an interest in universal visual vocabulary.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
I was influenced deeply as a child, seeing Buddhist iconography in the temple. Religious iconography has always fascinated me in that it communicates abstract notions (heaven, hell, grace, mercy for example) to the masses; often times to the illiterate masses.
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
I recreate light that I see or have seen and the feeling I had in a particular moment.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
My work combines a number of metal finishing techniques that I manipulate and modify to achieve specific finishes in the name of redirecting light. Metal is very unique in its ability to reflect light, I’m interested in the nature of materials. The nature of metal is that it is luminous and reflects fleeting light.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
I consider the viewer to be an intrinsic part of the paintings. The metal paintings are experiential in that they reflect fleeting light as one walks by them, this vocabulary is a foundation concept of the work; that all things are ephemeral. The paintings create an experience of transitory light and begin a dialogue about time and temporality, our relationship to time.
Before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
I think of artwork as part of a dialogue or conversation as opposed to a soliloquy. The artist makes a work and the viewer responds. I very much like to think of the making of art as participating in this form of communication, one that occurs whether I myself am physically present or not. I like the idea of a silent/non-verbal communication.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Miya. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
Thank you very much for the interview. Currently I am working on a solo exhibition in Tokyo this July as well as three forthcoming exhibitions in museums. I’m working on large-scale paintings and installation for these projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.