The project traces how the constructed image of Wabi-Sabi stems from Japan’s self-consciousness from the gaze of other countries and the role it plays in shaping Japan’s identity abroad and within. The installation stages the exercises being performed by the designer, who was born in England to Japanese parents and uses their personal position of being in the ‘in-between’ to demonstrate the absurdity of having to perform acts of ethnicity to live up to the perceptions of national identity that people have.
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Multimedia installation
Photo by Moe Asari