CURATOR’S NOTE

As I write this the precious island of Maui is burning due to climate change. As I write this a major Canadian oil corporation has been ordered to shut down its pipeline and compensate the Chippewa Indians $5.1M. We are living in a time of expansion and retraction, of immense loss and unprecedented freedoms, of unchanging and changing and changing. It has been said by many that to do two things at once is to do neither, but what if that doing is in fact one thing after all—a gesturing towards interconnectedness? What then becomes possible of these two or more things…

In Unchanging and changing and changing, a multidisciplinary exhibition by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC), it is this paradox that is in question. Featuring sculptural and wearable artworks and documentary footage, this exhibition is a personal reflection on traumatic events as seen through the body and the planet, and the resilience and release that has followed. It brings together two key concepts -  protective armours and what we will call inverse armours, wearable artworks. These sculptures present dichotomies of softness and linearity, rigidity and levity, and protection alongside joy and contending with one another through fashion-forward wearable garments that either shield against the storms of life or reveal in times of unapologetic liberation.

To be exhibiting at the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre is a homecoming of sorts; it is here that as a child Hatanaka studied semi-classical Nihon Buyo dance. The JCCC serves to celebrate the unique culture, history, and legacy of Japanese Canadians for the benefit of all while creating a tribute to the history of the Nikkei (diasporic) community. It is a perfect home for a deeper exploration into the breath of Hatanaka’s practice centered around washi, a thousand-year-old Japanese paper made by hand with local fibers and water. 

Though not seen explicitly, water is everywhere in this exhibition. It is integral to the making of washi paper and it was central to the choreography of the Unchanging and changing and changing Nihon Buyo dance performed by Danielle Yamashita and Katherine Yamashita, alongside Taiko drummers Jody Chan and Wy Joung Kou presented on the opening night of the exhibition. Water is the vehicle that moves the koi fish and is reflected in the numerous gyotaku fish prints (non-toxic direct prints from real fish) and linocut prints of waves and tsunami references in the panels of Hatanaka’s work. In works like Hazmat (Obachan and The Great Kantō), Hatanaka has reproduced an image of the catastrophic 1923 earthquake and tsunami that forced her grandmother to flee Japan for Canada. In other works such as For Nihon Buyo (Rain defence overcoat) and Aftershock, Tōhoku (Dancer's armour) tsunami images are reproduced again this time from the Tōhoku Disaster in 2011 which coincided with one of Hatanaka’s own personal aftershocks.

The accompanying documentary footage within the exhibition shares Hatanaka’s recent residency at Kashiki Seishi and the rapidly disappearing sustainable craft technologies that have been passed down for millennia, while a second video provides the audience with another look at the Nihon Buyo and Taiko drum performance. Scattered thoughtfully through the gallery are ephemera—several Koi fish, a symbol of courage and persistence from the Nihon-Buyō performance and delicately hung a prized fishing rod from her grandfather—both objects are also inextricably tied together through water. 

As we collectively move through these times, like fish swimming upstream against a current much stronger than us, as we navigate the unchanging and changing and changing, Hatanaka’s delicate yet durable washi works and accompanying ephemera serve as an invitation. One that encourages audiences to embrace both protecting and defending that which we care most about - our bodies, our cultures and traditions and our environment, while equally doing the very important work of demonstrating resilience and healing through the liberatory acts of dance, storytelling, music, play and joy.

— Chiedza Pasipanodya