Animated Installation (2:18 minutes), 2021
Wood, ceramics, Animation (watercolour on paper and digital)

Vancouver Art Gallery, part of group exhibition “Stories That Animate Us”.

During this year of the global pandemic the Japanese legend of the yokai Amabie—a mermaid-like creature with 3 legs, submerged deep in the unconscious of the “sea”—began to re-surface again as a story that could be told and revisited in a new light. The Amabie emerged from the ocean and was made visible so that she could speak prophecies of abundance or epidemic and left specific instructions to heal disease. I grew up listening to similar stories and legends, but not this one. I asked my 78 year old mother who I share a lived space with during this time, to retell and narrate the story in her own words.

The short film is projected on to a wooden sculptural stand bearing creaturely ceramic claw toes. The anthropomorphic object bears resemblance to a future bearing mirror and casts an open portal into gallery wall to reveal the Amabie’s nest egg.

Curators: Zoë Chan and Diana Freundl

Sound: Antoine Bédard
Editing: Candelario Andrade
Animation Assistance: Cherry Wen Wen Lu
Ceramics Assistance: Julia Chirka
Voice: Cindy Mochizuki and Tazuko Mochizuki
Carpentry: Minoru Yamamoto

Photo credit: Ian Lefebvre, Vancouver Art Gallery

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