Kintsugi Tokyo Biennale Proposal
Desaparecidos-Immigration-Nikkei identity-Tradition-Integration
The Japanese communities in South America are the biggest diasporas outside Japan. They kept Japanese traditions as a time capsule following their parents/grandparents traditions.
Japanese language schools, art techniques like ikebana, shōdo, taiko, dance, as well as martial arts and religion are part of every day life of Nikkei communities, they always look up to Tokyo, and Japan in general. As soon as the Nikkei can, they go to visit or travel to study.
The Japanese Association of Argentina (AJA) turned 100 years old and it is still attended by the younger generations for cultural programs. Time passes but their roots are strong.
Japanese people moved to North and South America for economic opportunities during the first half of the 20th century. Their main goal was to return to Japan once they had the resources. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, most of the Nikkei decided to stay and make the visiting country their home. They kept a tight grip on their roots, and traditions. Most of the Nikkei still considered themselves visitors, so they wouldn’t take part in local politics; they kept to themselves and married among themselves.
The seventeen Nikkei depicted in my work were people that were outspoken, they took part in politics, they didn’t stay on the sidelines, they considered themselves true Argentineans and they disrupted the status quo, that started with small revolutions at home, like marrying who they loved without worrying about ethnicity. They also defended factory workers rights, like my father, Oscar Takashi Oshiro, a labor rights lawyer.
My work acknowledges their existence and denounces the human rights violations committed in Argentina, but it also shows visually the space occupied by the seventeen.
The exhibition proposes a kind of reappropriation of the physical space: each portrait and chair make that empty space left by the 17 Nikkei tangible.
The chair ceases to be an object of everyday use and becomes the symbol, in the presence of absence.
Forty years after seeing her father taken away forever, the artist decided that, instead of rebuilding her life forgetting, it was time to remember.
This commemoration did not only refer to the beloved person, but also to all the disappeared belonging to the Japanese community, and thus promised to "give life" through color to the 17 missing Nikkei.
Gaby Oshiro works in this portrait reproduction exercise, giving the practice the name of Kintsugi, which in the Japanese tradition is the art of recognizing beauty in something that has been broken. This metaphor conceived by the artist is recognizable in her works, which express the concept of self-healing from the creation, combining fragments and sealing them with the color of memory.
As usual in collaboration with the Italian architect Germano Dalla Pola who deals with the planning of the exhibition.
The first part of the exhibition was exhibited in September-October 2016, in the Cultural Space of the Library of the National Congress of Buenos Aires, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Association in Argentina.
The second part took place in the Galleria dell'Artistico in December 2018 - January 2019, a cultural space belonging to the fine arts school in Treviso, the place where Gaby Oshiro completed his studies and the Italian city that hosted his family during the reconstruction of a new life.
The enormous absence left by the disappeared is still palpable, it feels as much as the presence of when they were alive, and perhaps even more.
The relatives of the disappeared continue to seek justice and answers about the destiny of their loved ones. These faces that reappear in Gaby Oshiro's canvases are the testimony that they have never been forgotten, nor will they be.
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