In her photographs, films, and performances populated by images of nature and human bodies, Yamashiro Chikako probes the entangled narratives about Okinawa—from its present-day perception as an idyllic tourist location to lesser-known histories of wartime atrocities.
Read MoreYamashiro Chikako was born on the island of Okinawa, formerly an independent kingdom that was annexed by Japan in the late 19th century. The island became a site of concentrated battle towards the end of World War II, during which Japanese military allegedly forced civilians to commit mass suicide. Occupied by the United States after the war, it was returned to Japanese rule in 1972. Okinawa is today known as a popular tourist destination, while unresolved tensions continue over the ongoing presence of American military bases on the island and the tendency to overlook its history and conditions in current Japanese politics.
The contradictory situations in Okinawa form the crux of Yamashiro Chikako's practice, such as in her early video project Okinawa Tourist (2004), which contrasts polished images of tourism and commodities with allusions to the dark past. In the three short performances that make up the work, the artist protests against tourist promotions about Okinawa (Trip to Japan), stages a traditional dance in a cemetery (Graveyard Eisa), and eats ice cream in front of one of the American military bases on the island (I Like Okinawa Sweet), pointing to the society's preference for embellished tourist narratives over harsh history and its consequences on the present.
Women, whether in surrealist settings or their everyday environment, are the usual protagonists of Yamashiro Chikako's work. In the video work Seaweed Woman (2008), the artist floats in the water, her face and body partially covered by seaweed. The photographs were taken near Henoko, an area in Okinawa known for coral and dugongs that became a site of contention over the relocation of a United States military base. Another work—the three-channel video installation A Woman of the Butcher Shop (2012), revolves around the daily life of a woman butcher, through which Yamashiro examines marginalised narratives and gender relations.
Yamashiro Chikako's fascination with storytelling has led her to work with sound. In the video Your Voice Came out through My Throat (2009), the artist overlays the face of an elderly man—his voice narrating the stories of the Battle of Saipan—onto her face. Mud man, which was first staged at the Aichi Triennale in 2016, includes a video component that juxtaposes footage of Okinawa and South Korea's Jeju Island—both of which share a history of brutality during and after World War II and are today renowned honeymoon sites—and a beatbox track. Yamashiro's use of human-made sounds was inspired by her grandparents, who would often make onomatopoeic sounds when talking about the war.
Yamashiro Chikako has participated in group exhibitions and festivals such as Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art, The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019); Kyoto Experiment: Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival (2018); TERATOTERA Festival 2017, Tokyo; and From Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2016). In 2020, Yamashiro was a winner of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award.
Biography by Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
