Mother and Children-Disassembled Body (2018) at Maryland Institute College of Art Wood sticks, mirror, tights, iron, painting, plastic box, paper, wax

190 x 190 x 190cm (length x width x height)

I created this image drawing on both my negative and positive experiences in Japan. This wood cube of sculpture is a mother and children’s room. The idea of the room has also come from a Japanese tea box. The audiences can play percussion instruments and share the space as if in Sand Play Therapy, a type of therapeutic intervention using a sandbox.

First, the family system involved making a strong hierarchy in the family and mothers had a strong responsibility to educate children. As a result, mothers who had children with disabilities created strong invisible borders and walls against other people. My mother became a Christian because she wished to heal my ear, and so I used to read the Bible and sing a song in a quiet voice in the church of my childhood. This experience gave me the opportunity to deconstruct and combine language and words. In other words, before something was named, like the story of the Garden of Eden (where Adam named the animals), I recognized the world through a visual language and also a simple sound from my hearing aid. It allowed me to focus on a part of the world not unlike a silent world where the notion of language becomes an abstract image. I think of it in the same way a bat sees an infrared world. Next, in order to break the borders and walls, I invite audiences into this cube space much like a Japanese tea room to make their own dialogues with playful sounds. The idea behind this is of the tea room established during the Edo period (from the 17th to 19th century). The Japanese society created a hierarchical system but the king and the common people could be equal in this room. And thus, we can see ourselves objectively, stand opposite to each other, and sympathize with other people. Actually, it strongly impacts the mothers who struggle with borders and walls, and they need this type of communication to see themselves objectively.