B.4.1 Archeology of Memory and Identity of the Japanese Diaspora: A Look into the Artistic Practice of Erica Kaminishi

Su Yen Chong, Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre

In the early 20th century, Japan was experiencing an intensified socio-economic downturn. In 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake devastated the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan centre leaving millions of people homeless. This prompted a national emigration policy to Latin America, which was still suffering from a void in low-cost labour following the termination of the African slave trade. Today, over 2.19 million individuals identify as Nikkei or being part of the Japanese diaspora reside in Latin America, with the population primarily concentrated in Brazil. Among their many experiences, World War II is embedded in the memories of many Nikkei communities whose lives were devastated because of the war. During this period, the questions of nationalism, loyalty, and ethnicity were brought to the forefront as the Nikkei communities underwent persecution by various governmental bodies. The contemporary identification of being part of the global Nikkei community has brought about a surge of rediscovery of commonality in history, culture, and communal memories.

The topic of this paper addresses issues of identity and belonging faced by the Nikkei communities in Latin America through the artistic practice of Erica Kaminishi with a focus on participatory art installation. Kaminishi, a third-generation Japanese Brazilian, was born and raised in Brazil, and in the past two decades, she moved between three continents (South America, Asia, and Europe). In this climate of globalization, Erica Kaminishi's work has internalized the exploration topics relating to transnational migrations focused on notions of identities, generational communal memories, cosmopolitanism, and belonging. The responses by the public or sometimes lack thereof works as records and commentary on their localities. This paper analyses Kaminishi's participatory art projects in its involvement of the public in the production of the work, and ultimately, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the literatures of cultural identities in the Nikkei communities.

B.4.2 Intra-Caribbean Migration of Women in Mariette Monpierre's Documentary, Entre 2 Rives

Mahadevi Ramakrishnan, Colgate University

Mariette Monpierre's 52-minute French documentary, Entre 2 Rives, filmed in Guadeloupe and in the Dominican Republic, premiered in Pointe à Pitre, Guadeloupe on International Women's Day, March 9, 2017. The film shares the painful and personal stories of two women from the Dominican Republic who have made the treacherous journey to Guadeloupe in search of opportunities to better the lives of their children left behind in the Dominican Republic. This poignant film is emblematic of a host of post-colonial societal challenges in the Caribbean Basin, from poverty, illiteracy, the absence of fathers and its impact on women and children, to issues of cultural identity and belonging.

In 2017, the year Entre 2 Rives was released, the total number of female immigrants in Guadeloupe was at 11,889 compared to the 8,000+ in 2009. There were twice as many women than men, especially those between the ages of 25-54. The additional 3,889 immigrants may seem like a drop in the bucket for larger countries like the United States. However, on an island whose landmass is 1,128 km2 and whose population is at 400,404, this increase is not negligible, especially considering that this increase only represents the female immigrant population and not the overall immigrant population that includes thousands more from Haiti and Dominica. This continued upward trend of female immigrants, mostly from the Dominican Republic, and their ongoing struggles of resettlement in Guadeloupe suggests that Entre 2 Rives was a timely and significant contribution to the current debates on immigration in the French Caribbean, especially that of undocumented immigrants. Through this heart-wrenching and yet uplifting documentary, Mariette Monpierre elevates the untold stories of these female migrants from obscurity and places them squarely within the matrix of intra-Caribbean migration.

B.4.3 Frontiers of Resentment: Physical and Moral Walls Torn Down by the Artists Silvano Lora and Pierre Valls

Diego Renart González, Yildiz Technical University

For this session, I propose the reading of two artists' work: one Dominican, Silvano Lora (1931–2003), and another French-Spanish, resident in Mexico, Pierre Valls (1977). Both globetrotters, both have highlighted the experience of the border and migration, emphasizing its pros and cons in their strategies. For example, Lora, with his famous action in Santo Domingo to meet the Spanish caravels in commemoration of the misnamed "V Centenary of the Discovery of America," and dressed as a Taino Indian in his canoe, stressed the indigenous oblivion and the globalizing effect of the European migratory occupation. A concept that he relapsed in the Route of Hatuey: a recreation of the voyage between Haiti and Cuba commanded by the aboriginal chief to alert his neighbours to the savagery and greed of the invader. Valls, for his part, starting from works such as 2000, an investigation in which he entered the black market of jewels stolen from emigrants who cross Mexico mounted on La Bestia railway, or with "Muga," "border" in Basque, where he perpetrated a journey on a precarious boat to conquer dreams of prosperity inspired by the right bank of the Bilbao estuary, aims to focus on both physical and mental borders, thus demonstrating that every border is the daughter of an inequality. I will reflect on all of these concepts with examples during the session.

B.4.4 The Border as Abyss: Sculpting Negativity in the Global Village

Martín Ruiz-Mendoza, University of Michigan

This presentation offers a critical exploration of Shibboleth, a 548-foot-long crack sculpted at Doris Salcedo’s workshop in Bogotá and exhibited at London’s Tate Modern in 2007. The first part of the presentation analyzes how Salcedo articulates a critique of modernity by aesthetically hinting at its dark side, which the artist associates with the pervasiveness of exclusion, racism, and xenophobia in contemporary Western societies. By revisiting Bauman (1997), I suggest that, since those traits are in fact constitutive of the modern State, Shibboleth can be seen as a critique of the modern project itself. The second part explores Salcedo’s vindication of Rilke’s modest and yet powerful definition of works of art as nothing more, nor less, than “strangely silent and patient things that stand around in all their otherness” (On Completing the Circle 37). The presentation concludes with a reflection about the way in which Salcedo approaches artistic creation as an ever-unfinished attempt to trace the scars of history in contemporary societies.