Waiting for Translation. 2nd year graduate student show reflecting on our May 2007 trip to Japan.
The show dates run from Sept. 7 to October 5, 2007 @ Warren Robbins Gallery (University of Michigan School of Art & Design, 2000 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI. Gallery hours: 8-5pm, Mon-Fri.)
Images from the show:
“Onigawara – If the West had them.” and “Mix Mitate”
“Onigawara – If the West had them.”
Accompanying written description on wall: “Onigawara are decorative roofing tiles found on traditional architecture in Japan. Symbolically, they are placed at the corners of buildings to protect the home or temple from exterior forces that might cause them harm.”
Close-up. This work was my imagining of what the West’s version of onigawara might look like. I came back from Japan thinking a lot about contrasts/comparisons of how the East and West think about control, fear, and nature.
A re-presentation of the video documentation of our “Mix Mitate” installation and performance.
Written description: “The installation and performance documented here took place on June 1st, 2007 in Hikone, Japan as part of our A&D graduate student exhibition there. Four graduate architecture students at Shiga Prefecture University and one graduate student at UM Art & Design collaborated to design and construct this project.
The site of the work was the empty shop window of a building in downtown Hikone – an area of the city which has experienced economic depression and seen many of its young people move to the suburbs.
Over the course of a few hours, people were invited in from the street into a strange, remix world where they were served hotdogs and Coca-Cola in a traditional japanese tea room by a Japanese cowgirl and cardboard horse – or perhaps stepped to the American-style bar where they were offered onigiri and ocha by a samurai Mickey Mouse.”
