I miei pensieri

"KINTSUGI" Art Installation, Espacio Cultural de la Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación. Buenos Aires, Argentina. September/October 2016           Pictures courtesy of Veronica Matayoshi and Augusto Shimabuku.           17 doors for each family hit by the tragedy of losing the 17 Nikkei.                                          Juan Carlos Higa, poet/journalist.                                           Poster for the event. Japanese Association in Argentina's vice-president Ernesto Kimura, Cultural Affairs delegate from the Japanese Embassy in Buenos Aires, Mr Tatsuya Kasahara.                                      View from the top of the installation.

  These are the sixteen portraits (I only photographed their eyes) that I painted for the Library of Congress in Argentina.

https://www.facebook.com/Culturagratiscaba/videos/1441979332486082/

Kintsugi Art Installation Painting each portrait, looking at pictures very closely and rebuilding each glance, smile, gesture that it was vanished with time. After forty years, I became the portraits.  Taking as a protagonist the Buddhist precept "Niuga, ganiu".  "I enter, enter myself". Putting some parts of myself after reading Andrés Asato's book "No Sabían que Eramos Semillas" written about the seventeen Japanese-Argentinean "desaparecidos/disappeared" in Argentina during the 70's dictatorship that killed thirty thousand of its citizens. I also had the chance to talk directly with the relatives of many of the "desaparecidos *Nikkei"for more insights and anecdotes. With each brush stroke, I was trying to let go some of that emptiness that flooded the lives of the families touched by the tragedy of having a "disappeared" person. I took the responsibility to make my father and the other sixteen, to become real

http://www.bcnbib.gov.ar/405/Japon-y-Argentina-integrados-por-el-arte.html

                Kintsugi                  Instalación de Arte De el 7 de septiembre - 7 de octubre, 2016. Espacio Cultural BCN, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jornadas de Argentina y Japón Unidas por el Arte. Pintando cada retrato, mirando las fotos y reconstruyendo cada mirada, cada sonrisa, gesto, que después de más de cuarenta años se habían desvanecido con el tiempo, al final me convertí en los retratos. Tomando como protagonista el precepto budista "niuga, ganiu". "Yo entro, entra mi mismo". Poniendo en cada persona algo de mío, de lo que me dejaron después de haber leído cada capítulo del libro de Andrés Asato o de haber hablado directamente con los familiares de los desaparecidos Nikkei. Tratando al mismo tiempo de desprenderme con cada pincelada de color de un poco de ese vacío que inundó las vidas de los familiares de lo desaparecidos. Me tomé la responsabilidad de hacer reales otra vez a nuestros seres queridos. De transformarlos con color y traer

Each one of the subjects of the paintings left me with something. I had to read each one of their stories on Asato's book "No Sabían que Somos Semillas". The picture above belongs to the rugby team "San Luis Club" where Ricardo Dakuyaku was playing  as a scrum. They made it to first division and got to tour around Europe in 1975. Each time someone would tackle Dakuyaku, he would get up smiling. He didn't want his adversaries to know that he was hurting. He also didn't quit trying to play rugby just because they would tell him to quit. He was the shortest rugby player at the time. After I read their chapters, I don't cry for them because their lives were sad, yes, they had a tragic ending, but while they were alive they had a lot to offer to the world. Lots of people loved them. But I cry sometimes because all the potential that we lost when the dictatorship killed them.