Community-engaged performative installation, 2019

10 embroidery canvases, 30 minute audio work, traditional Japanese sweets.

Other Faces of Nihonga is a collective embroidery and listening experience focusing on the historical and contemporary racialized experiences of women of Japanese Canadian and Japanese descent in British Columbia. Bunka shishu is a Japanese punch embroidery tradition originating at the turn of the 20th century in Japan. This technique of embroidery was a hobby craft by my paternal grandmother (1911-2003), a Nisei Japanese Canadian, who created many bunka canvases into her 90’s. In this participatory experience, participants will have the opportunity to work on one of ten canvases depicting illustrated scenes that take into consideration the flora and fauna of nihonga with the presence tableaus and scenes of Japanese Canadian/Japanese women. These panels reflect snapshots from memory; a series of non narrative manga panels based on the lives of 5 Japanese Canadian/Japanese women who will be interviewed for this project. 

The spoken audio narratives of these women will be heard while participants work collectively to mend, stitch and build up imagery of remembrances. This project is in conjunction and response to the exhibition of the works by Elizabeth Yeend Duer (1889-1951) an Anglo-Japanese (mixed race) painter who was born in the foreign settlement of Nagasaki. Duer moved to Tokyo in 1904 and studied painting with master painter Gyokushi Atomi (1859-1943). Duer took on the artistic identity of Gyokushō. Duer left Japan in 1940 and came to Victoria to be near her first cousin and artist Katharine Maltwood. She unlike other Japanese/Japanese Canadian women did not go through the internment and continued to live and work as a painter amongst her peers such as Emily Carr. Elizabeth Duer—Gyokushō created more than 100 hundred paintings on shikishi boards that depict the flora and fauna of Vancouver Island, developing a unique transnational style.1 

Other Faces of Nihonga is a respond to the Legacy Gallery's exhibition Translations: The Art and Life of Elizabeth Yeend Duer—Gyokusho.

Sound Design: Antoine Bédard
Production Assistance: Cherry Wen Wen Lu

Interviewees: Ritsuko Yoshida, Tamako Tanaka, Grace Eiko Thomson

Presented and photo credit by the University of Victoria Legacy Gallery

Audio work, listening and tasting workshop, 2018
Fresh pears and cutting utensils, audio work, pear tea

In this 13 minute audio-led experience, you’ll harvest seeds from the artist’s pear tree. The tree, graphed from at least four kinds of pears found in the yards of East Vancouver neighbourhoods since the 1980s, was cared for by Mochizuki’s grandparents, her father, and then by her.

Harvest with Care makes reference to Roy Kiyooka’s Pear Tree Pomes and photographs Cleaning Up the Pear Tree located in the Roy Kiyooka fonds at the Belkin Gallery Archives. The actions of harvesting and caring for plant-life, gardens and living things make connections to mother tongues, the cyclical cycle of life and death, and how to live beside intuitive commons on an everyday basis. This experience finished with a pear green tea made with pears from the tree.

Roy Kiyooka (1924-1994) was a poet, multi-media artist, sculptor painter, and writer whose meticulous use of poetry, language, and spirit has been an influencing factor to Mochizuki's artistic process and practice.

The artist acknowledges Antoine Bedard for the sound design and Alix Rodrigues of Nut Hut for dehydrating pears for the tea.

Click here to listen to the audio.

Tarot Reading Performance, 2018
Wattis Institute, San Francisco

The Witch’s Table is a five-course, sweet and savory culinary and tarot reading experience that cleanses our perception of time and casts new predictions for the future. At this intimate gathering participants are guided through a series of tastes and new directions.

Savoury and Sweet 5 course Meal:

Course 1 Cleansing of the tongue
Daikon yuzu palette cleanser
Yuzu ginger martini

Course 2 Appetizers
Cucumber salad and spinach goma-ae 
Mochi wrapped in bacon and lotus root tempera
Hearty miso soup

Course 3 Clearing of Bad Luck Sushi Roll
Directional ehomaki

Course 4 Main
Mushroom and dango bundle

Course 5 Desserts and Closing
Shingen mochi
Matcha madeleine
Turkish coffee

Memory Drawing Workshop, 2017

Oishii (the Japanese word for delicious) is the thematic of a series of 4 drawing and tasting exercises/workshops that were offered to the seniors ranging from 89-103 years old at Nikkei Senior’s Home. The workshops consisted of weekly drawing activity and an edible snack or a cup of olfactory experiences to tease out a memory. This workshop is in conjunction with the exhibition Rock, Paper, Scissors, 2017 at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre.

Children’s Workshop, 2014

Studying the formations and creatures inside the shifting and moving clouds in the sky, participants worked on creating a series of pastel drawings on paper. This workshop was part of the Koganecho Bazaar Residency 2014.

Photo credit: Paul Mundok