OPAL

OPAL's inaugural artist-in-residence, Mami Takahashi, presents a sound installation with her collaborator, Adrian McBride as art collective, Spiral Body. This work is an investigation into intimacy, but perhaps not closeness, in public spaces using the sonic of poetry reading of Takahashi's poems. Takahashi used vocabulary from her old journals made decades ago in Japanese, and processed into English using online translation software. By filtering these original writings, Takahashi attempted to question who has "access" and is "American", in terms of the relationship of English usage.

This rendition of "My Word is Hard to Hear" uses each circle on the floor as a listening station, focusing the voices of one of two readers reciting the same poem in hushed tones otherwise lost amongst the space's other noise. Without sharing with the listener any personal details apart from their manner of speech while in the circle, the readings highlight the listeners' own understanding of the speakers' ambiguous identities.

Takahashi will teach Kintsugi (gold joinery on broken ceramics) workshops quarterly at OPAL for the next three years. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art form in which gold is used to repair broken ceramics. The practice of Kintsugi highlights the break rather than erasing it and emphasizes that the break, or trauma, is what makes the ceramics more valuable.
Many immigrants left their memories, belongings, and community members behind for a better future. For Takahashi, the process of Kintsugi is the metaphor for embracing the memory from the past and creating a new presence.

Mami Takahashi is a multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo. Using photography, performance, installation, and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being Asian and a woman living outside of her home country.

Previous exhibitions and performances have taken place at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; DANK Haus, Chicago, IL; The International Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada; Gwangju Folk Art Museum, Gwangju, Korea; Instituto Municipal del Arte la Cultura, DG Mexico and Toriizaka Art Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues. She holds an MFA from Portland State University and a BFA from Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kanagawa. Takahashi is a recipient of the Ford Family Award for MASS MoCA residency and the Pacific Northwest College of Art+Leland Iron Work residency.

Adrian McBride (St. Louis, MO) is a musician and sound artist currently based in Portland, Oregon USA. McBride received BFA in Integrated Arts and Creative Writing from Bard College, and has been performed in the U.S and internationally, including at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland Oregon, U.S.A.; Monkey Town, Brooklyn NY, U.S.A; Flux Factory: Queens NY, U.S.A; Gallery gelegenheiten and Zvi HECKER, Berlin, Germany; Jardins Synthétiques Festival, Toulouse, France.