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.
Exhibition photos by: Mario Gallucci
A palm-sized stationery Bento; Minimalist
functionality will save your life
Mai Ide
April 2023
Ceramic Sculpture, Ceramic pedestal
functionality will save your life
Mai Ide
April 2023
Ceramic Sculpture, Ceramic pedestal
Nudity fortress / Naked
garment project
Mai Ide
April 2023
Recycle Kimono and other
garments, metal rack, vintage
metal grid, mirror
garment project
Mai Ide
April 2023
Recycle Kimono and other
garments, metal rack, vintage
metal grid, mirror
MIRROR GHOSTS
Kevin Yatsu & juju & Mai Ide
2023
Interactive video and plant
Developed during the installation of Raster Array: Overcastings, MIRROR GHOSTS reflects on the themes of the exhibition through imaginative play. A plant with a gridded pot sits against the wall. The pot's soil holds three metal grids which when touched with a nearby audio cable, triggers live interactions to an adjacent video. Projected on the back of a gridded bookshelf, the video floats through a virtual replica of the gallery space. Through the aide of audience interactions, mirrored plants grow within the space as walls of the gallery are consumed by the grid.
Kevin Yatsu & juju & Mai Ide
2023
Interactive video and plant
Developed during the installation of Raster Array: Overcastings, MIRROR GHOSTS reflects on the themes of the exhibition through imaginative play. A plant with a gridded pot sits against the wall. The pot's soil holds three metal grids which when touched with a nearby audio cable, triggers live interactions to an adjacent video. Projected on the back of a gridded bookshelf, the video floats through a virtual replica of the gallery space. Through the aide of audience interactions, mirrored plants grow within the space as walls of the gallery are consumed by the grid.