OHAYO RADIO: A Conversation Between Friends begins in Kochi, Japan as two friends, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka and Johnny Nghiem, explore papermaking through collaborations in sculpture and photography. This exhibition symbolizes an exchange between the old and the new, the homeland and the diaspora, the traditional and the newer media and between people in different places coming together in one place — a third space. This third space, rich with cultural hybridity and play, speaks to cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldua’s ideas that identity is constructed across differences. 

In this exhibition, Hatanaka’s wearable washi sculptures, washi patchworks and koi are presented as part of a network of conversations tying back to her father’s homeland (Japan). This work exists alongside images taken before and during the making of the sculptures. The images are photographed by Nghiem who is interested in capturing gestures, atmospheric qualities and cultural nuances within his lens-based practice. For OHAYO RADIO photographs printed on washi emerging from his time in Kochi with Hatanaka in 2023 are accompanied by video vignettes from his recent travels to Vietnam—the homeland of his parents.

As they return to their homes, Hatanaka in Toronto, Canada and Nghiem in Berlin, Germany, they maintain correspondence through calls which they lovingly name, OHAYO RADIO. “Ohayo” is a colloquial term meaning “good morning” in Japanese and radio being a mode of transmitting audio through sound waves is used as an entry in point into this adventurous and warm exhibition that reflects the material products of a 1000-year-old tradition of washi at the historic Ino-Cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan. In this third place, away from Toronto and Berlin, OHAYO RADIO: A Conversation Between Friends is a manifestation of aliveness and conviviality at the intersections of place, material and homeland.

All works originate from a residency with Washi＋ in 2023.