{"id":66,"date":"2024-03-15T11:02:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T11:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/?p=66"},"modified":"2024-12-15T10:40:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T10:40:11","slug":"chikako-yamashiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Chikako Yamashiro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Shapeshifter<\/em>, the first UK solo exhibition at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by acclaimed performance and video artist\u00a0Chikako Yamashiro\u00a0(b.1976, Okinawa, Japan).<\/p>\n<p>Yamashiro, winner of the Asian Art Award 2017, dramatises the lesser-known aspects of Okinawa\u2019s contemporary reality, while questioning dominant historical accounts of Japanese and American occupation of the islands. The site of fierce battles between the US and Japan at the end of World War Two, Okinawa still has a high concentration of American military bases, occupying around 20 per cent of the land \u2014 despite the wishes of many of its indigenous inhabitants. Yamashiro\u2019s practice engages with political and social histories of Okinawa to create provocative and haunting works, drawing on oral accounts and often utilising her own body.<\/p>\n<p>Yamashiro\u2019s early performance work\u00a0<em>OKINAWA TOURIST<\/em>\u00a0(2004) is a sequence of three short performances to camera:\u00a0<em>Trip to Japan<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Graveyard Eisa<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>I Like Okinawa Sweet<\/em>. Taking its name from a tourism operator on the island, the work amounts to a parody of a tour of Okinawa. Yamashiro\u2019s deployment of clich\u00e9 ridicules how such explorations of place can gloss over socio-political truths. Whether devouring ice creams in front of a military base, or staging a typical Okinawan dance in a graveyard, Yamashiro sought to show how the US military presence continues to permeate life on the island.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em>Seaweed Woman<\/em>\u00a0(2008), Yamashiro mythologises herself as a creature of the sea. In the photographic series, the artist is pictured covered in weeds, floating listlessly in the current, in the sea off Henoko. The area was known for its blue coral and population of dugongs, but was built over to construct the new American military base despite near-unanimous domestic opposition. Yamashiro\u2019s immersive video installation submerges the viewer in this mystical world, presenting the American military relocation from her underwater perspective. The artist\u2019s body comes to symbolise Okinawan subjugation at the hands of Japan and the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Read &gt;&gt; <a href=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/keithwhittle\/docs\/chikako_yamashiro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Publication<\/a><\/p>\n<p>More recently Yamashiro has begun to shift from performing in her own works to featuring third party subjects. Her latest film,\u00a0<em>Mud Man<\/em>\u00a0(2016), uses a male protagonist for the first time, and was filmed in South Korea\u2019s Jeju and in Okinawa, with Japanese and Korean languages mixed, and the landscape of the two islands juxtaposed. The work continues Yamashiro\u2019s interest in employing flesh and the earth as\u00a0metaphors for the political body of Okinawa.\u00a0<em>Mud Man\u00a0<\/em>is presented in White Rainbow\u2019s new purpose-built cinema space.<\/p>\n<p>The accompanying monograph on Chikako Yamashiro includes installation photographs, a newly commissioned essay by Isabella Maidment, and an artist response by Claire Potter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chikako Yamashiro<\/p>\n<a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\" https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/?p=66 \">Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects","col-md-4 col-sm-6"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/keithwhittle.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/1.jpeg?fit=672%2C448&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3334,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/3334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}