Mai's research on Japanese internment camps excavates her identity because she views that the Japanese American internment caused those who suffered from it to question whether or not duality could actually exist between both Japaneseness and America. The internment seemed to recognize us as a stranger, and this notion is still embedded in our society.
Mai Ide and other Augury House members explore the concepts of rigidity, invisibility, and vulnerability via the themes of grid, glass, and nudity. Their exhibition represents a collective effort with diverse cultural backgrounds as well as artistic methods. Spanning across textile arts, sculptures, digital arts, fine arts, music, and performance, they aim to provide a holistic immersive visual and audio representation of their lives.
Using wood, metal, glass, and nude garments, as well as other textiles, Mai’s installations seek to articulate the perpetuating microaggression, unconscious intolerance, and institutional racism in heracademic and professional life. Mai believes that art can reframe the world around us. Art can catalyze its audience to reframe and/or reconsider their place and identity within the world.
Kevin Yatsu, a 4th generation Japanese American, creates multi-media interactions within a gridded world utilizing game engines and cutting-edge technologies. In response to the in-person exhibition, Yatsu frames the digital space as an opportunity for exploring the show's themes through stylized play.
Motivated by Mai’s courage and passion, actor Carissa Te-Hsuan Chu desires to narrate Asian folklore via multidisciplinary arts and examine the intricate relationship between sensory perception and affective preferences with an acute focus on nude colors.
For the auditory aspect, musician Joshua Limanjaya Lim will immerse attendees in an ambient sound bath experience using modular synthesizers. Incorporating samples sourced by other collective members, the music gives voice to our shared yet kaleidoscopic Asian American experiences.
Like Mai’s textile artworks, this conceptual quilt, with colorful threads of cultures and identities, allows the viewer to pierce through a self-limiting scarcity mindset and thereby arrays a new approach to transcend traumas and to flourish both as individuals and as a community.