THE SKINNY
The War is Not Over Chikako Yamashiro’s exhibition is now open at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Here, the artist and guest curator Kirsteen Macdonald explain that the works are complex expressions of the contested politics of Okinawa, but have a wider resonance, too Interview: Adam Benmakhlouf
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Chikako Yamashiro, Chinbin Western, 2021. Video still
September 2021 — Feature
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Chikako Yamashiro, at Dundee Contemporary Arts, until 21 Nov Image: courtesy of the artist and Yumiko Chiba Associates
“If you get caught up in the vast historical flow of Okinawa you can end up getting so transfixed that there’s no going back”
within the next two decades. One distinctive feature of Chinbin Western is its close alignment of actors and the roles they play. For instance, the tattooed and pierced character who plays an artist in the film, is herself an opera singer and artist. It’s one subtle strategy that evidences some of Yamashiro’s interesting relationship with “a cinematic approach”. Yamashiro says, “The aim is not creating an informative film that depicts a historical fact, rather it’s a process in which image is seen first and then visualised. The main purpose is to convey the reverberating emotions and circulating voices of all who live together.” Speaking of her aspirations for the more general relevance of her work, Yamashiro says “there are people in many nations and regions who live under the influence of the scars left behind by war and history, and fissures are appearing in various places under this state of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I think that asking questions to people outside of Okinawa and overseas too through the highly abstracted language of art makes the subject more accessible.” Is it ever hard for Yamashiro to make work about a live situation that is not just on her doorstep, but threaded through every aspect of her immediate environment? Her reply to this final question is unequivocal and inspiring. “It is not difficult at all to create works for me as there are so many themes to be depicted and I will continue to create works in order to live.”
Art
Photo: Ruth Clark. Courtesy of the artist and Yumiko Chiba Associates
For the artist, her relationship with the context of Okinawa has developed and changed. “If you get caught up in the vast historical flow of Okinawa you can end up getting so transfixed that there’s no going back.” Suggesting the special turning point that Chinbin Western represents in her own artistic development, Yamashiro continues: “Over the space of about ten years, experiencing both the joy and the pain associated with the tidal force of Okinawa’s history, I myself and many other people who live here finally started to speak in their own voices.” Chikako Yamashiro, Chinbin Western, 2021. In itself, Chinbin Western: Installation view at Dundee Contemporary Arts Representation of the Family (the full title) is a narrative film, that kinawan artist-filmmaker Chikako experiments with storytelling and allegory. It Yamashiro’s solo exhibition at Dundee centres on two different families; in one of which Contemporary Arts has – like a lot of the father is part of the quarrying that is taking shows over the last few months – been a long time place to create a new landmass in Henoko for a coming, and not just because of recent pandemic new US military base. “I wanted to portray the postponements. The works in the show also extend family of a man who has no choice but to work as much further back into timelines that include the an earth miner, who never leaves his hometown social, political and cultural histories and tradiwhile trying to protect his family’s happiness,” tions of Okinawa, where the artist is from and lives. says Yamashiro. “I wanted to portray [at the same The three works in DCA include two previous time a different] family of grandchildren and works and one of Yamahshiro’s most recent films, grandfathers who protect the sanctuary left in titled Chinbin Western. “Okinawa is not the filmic their hometown.” backdrop, it is a character in the work,” says The operatic song-form of arias are used at Macdonald. The Japanese prefecture of over 150 points for characters to communicate, and as a islands has been subject to military occupation by deliberate reference to European cultural imports. the US since the Second World War. A situation all These feature seamlessly alongside tsurane ryūka, the more complicated by the triangular power a genre of narrative song dynamic of the Japanese Government, US interthat is particular to ests and the Okinawan population – who voted Okinawa. In parallel, against the continuing presence of US military there’s also a play within forces in a local referendum that was largely the film that is performed ignored. “Since World War II,” Yamashiro explains, in the costume of the “70% of Japan’s US military bases remained on the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429tiny island of Okinawa. Therefore people say that 1879). This is performed the war is not over yet.” at the site of the quarry itself. It’s a mountainous region that has for 65 years been exploited for the purpose of creating the new US military base. In reality, the people that lived there for the last 600 years were displaced in order for the quarrying to take place. While there is a cluster of ten households remaining, these Chikako Yamashiro are likely to be gone
