site-specific, permanent artwork, 2025
porcelain figurines, cedar salmon, signage and print media design

Seiko Udoku is a permanent art installation by Cindy Mochizuki featuring 230 miniature porcelain figurines on the walls and 64 cedar sockeye salmon fish on the ceiling of the CEED Centre Neighbourhood House. It was created to reflect the lives and experiences of Japanese Canadians living on 230 farms that were confiscated from them during the Second World War. They were branded ‘enemy aliens’  and were forcibly uprooted from their homes to internment camps in the interior of B.C., road camps or sugar beet farms in Manitoba.

As part of her research, the artist engaged in memory work with descendants of families from Ruskin, Whonnock, Albion, Haney, Port Hammond and Pitt Meadows.

Seiko udoku is translated into English as ‘work in the field during fine weather and read at home in wet weather.’ This phrase is captured in Takaichi Umezuki’s preface in the History of Haney Nokai by Yasutaro Yamaga (whose family is represented in Porcelains #74-#80). The poetic proverb suggests the big hopes of the issei (first generation), who journeyed across the Pacific Ocean with ‘a dream of riches’ to build prosperity through labour such as farming, fishing and logging in Canada. Many of the porcelains represent specific people, stories, experiences and sites.