A.S

Artist Statement

My artwork deals with the interaction between the real and imaginary. Using various media and autobiographical elements, I have been exploring issues of sexual identity and desire. As a Japanese woman who has been culturally conditioned to contain rather then reveal, I am interested in uncovering my own identity by aggressively evoking emotional reactions from my viewer’s.

Poo-chi is my name for the transformation of a particular part of the adult body into something that provocatively suggests a young girl’s body. These images elicit the forbidden sexual desire: an adult’s sexual desire for a child. The child desires to be sexual being and the adult fears to desire the child as a sexual being. Can the desires be controlled? Poo-Chi seduces the viewer into a consideration of the ubiquity of these forbidden desires. The imagery seduces the act of penetration, however there are no orifices to penetrate – only in the viewer’s mind.

Final Address series
What does the immigrant dream when he/she first arrives in this country? Freedom? A better life? The American life as seen on TV? What is the ultimate American dream for the immigrant?
For the past two years I have been collecting images of funeral homes. Funeral homes are the icon of the ultimate American way to finish one’s life. In Japan, there is no equivalent – funerals are usually held in public religious places, such as Buddhist temples, or churches. Here funeral homes exist as comfortable and relaxing spaces designed to ease your experience of death.I am obsessed with this formula and believe that “American funeral homes” fulfill my vision of the ultimate “American dream”. In this series I have photographed homes from a specific time period -the fifties to the seventies, and searched for architecture styles that present a modern, amusement park like, funeral home of my dreams. To enhance these images and push my perspective, I have played with the processing in order to find a color balance that compliments the unrealistic aspect of this fantasy.

MoonChild -a working title- is a work-in-progress using mass produced figurines placed in artificial dioramas and mixed with natural surroundings. This project extracts erotically charged child imagery from dime store toys.

Urine Princess(Oto Hime Sama) explores my interest in the difference of esthetics and hygiene between Japan and America. Japanese ladies are accustomed to hiding the sound of action in the toilet, often electronic renditions of waterfalls are played in Japanese restrooms. This machine originally intended for display in a western women’s powder room/urinal, plays a digitally composed urination soundtrack I authored to cover the viewer sound of bathroom use in a western toilette. This device allows the user to participate in a simulation of water sounds that do the opposite of similar machines installed in Japanese rest rooms –the Urine Princess inverts proper Japanese etiquette in the toilette by amplifying rather then covering what happens behind closed doors.
I have an eye phobia.

In Glance(Made in Occupied Japan), there are 3 double-sided, large scale cartoon eyes floating in space, referencing frequent nightmares from my childhood. I appropriated thee eyes from antique celluloid toys from the 30’s and 50’s, the toys were made in pre-war Japan, or during occupied of Japan after WWII. For Japanese toy makers, these eyes were shaped as a comical interpretation of the Caucasian eye, since most of those toys were for export to the Western market. The Japan-ized foreign eyes fright me, but I can’t stop staring at the source of my fear.

Staffed Memories is a site-specific installation in LC Bates Museum in Maine. This natural museum is part of an old orphan school. Old staffed animals, which represents all children’s passage in the school, is places as a mirror image to the museum’s collections of taxidermies. The taxidermy represents the Museum’s history, but the stuffed animals stand in for the forgotten children who have passed through the institution –unlike the taxidermy the children are both gone and forgotten.