SELECTED PAST EXHIBITIONS
The Unknown Artist
March-April 2020. Curated exhibition. Works from “Seeing You/Seeing Me” project.
The Unknown Artist, curated by Lucy Cotter, stages a dialogue around obsolescence, the relative value of making, and its entanglement with artistic authorship and visibility. It probes some of the designated roles for artists and (art) objects, raising questions about the future shape-shifting of the artistic field and the ecology of practice.
The exhibition presents works from the collection of Portland’s recently closed Museum of Contemporary Craft, whose makers’ identities have been lost, alongside contemporary artworks that invoke questions of artistic visibility and the value of art. These include a photographic series by Mami Takahashi engaging with social and artistic visibility, an installation by Asztalos Zsolt on forgotten artists in history, and a performance by Takahiro Yamamoto entitled The Property of Opaqueness that explores economies of looking and artistic validation. Revital Cohen and Tuur van Balen’s video work 75 Watt reflects on the unseen human choreography behind mass-produced objects. Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Mirror Shield project asks social media users to support activists by making objects designed by the artist, creating new models for art practice.
Lucy Cotter, PhD is an independent writer, curator, and artist, currently based in Portland, Oregon. She was curator of the Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and is author of Reclaiming Artistic Research (2019).
Image: Installation view, Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland, OR, 2020. Photo: Mario Gallucci
My Word is Hard to Hear
August, 2019. Solo exhibition. Works from “Title Will Be Here”, “The Poetry of Presence”, “Seeing You/Seeing Me (video-documentation)”, “Shokan” projects.
This exhibition, My Word is Hard to Hear, which title stems from a work displayed in an exhibition in 2014 about investigation of veiled communication within private and public space. Since 2017, Takahashi has pushed that original concept to public poetry installation and performance with her body to experiment with these works as communication tools with unknown audiences.
This exhibition included Takahashi’s new developing project, “The Poetry of Presence”, which used text fragments by a fictitious Japanese poet in unattributed urban interventions. Takahashi conceived of this way of working to overcome how visa restrictions limit the use of her own identity in public space-related performances. She is interested in how art re-ritualizes the everyday to reveal something about our the underlying belief stuctures and cultural codes within everyday life.
“Shokan” project also presented as a large installation format with over fifty vocabulary research papers, copied of journals and her notes along with her poems made from these vocabularies.
The series of painting, “Title Will Be Here” showcased its variations of styles and years of made.
Image: Installation view, Blackfish Gallery, Portland OR, 2019. Photo: Perry Doane
The Missing Body: performance in the absence of the artist
June-September, 2014. Curated exhibition. Works from “Seeing You/Seeing Me”.
The Southern Alberta Art Gallery is co-producing a major curatorial project focused on expanding discourse around the nature of performance. The Missing Body: performance in the absence of the artist, curated by Lethbridge-based Cindy Baker, explores the concept of performance via art in which the artist's body is obscured, hidden, or simply not present in the final manifestation of the work. Through interactive projects (both in the gallery and outdoors/offsite), art that encourages the viewer to become the performer, and art that invites audiences to interact directly with the artist, The Missing Body offers hands-on opportunities for audiences of all ages to engage with performance art.
Installation view, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada, 2014
de·mar·cate
January, 2015. Solo exhibition. Works from “Title Will Be Here”, “Sin Papeles”
The PSU Littman Gallery is pleased to present: de·mar·cate, work by Mami Takahashi.
Sin Papeles collects language from articles about immigration, revealing the pronunciation of words as a way to abstract terms familiar to native speakers to share the experience a non-native speaker has with them. A barrier both metaphorically and literally in the gallery space for viewers, the piece forces viewers to question their own assumption of access or highlights their experience lacking it.
A series of works, Title Will Be Here, uses translated and segmented text from original writings in a foreign language. These writings, made decades ago by a non-English speaking teenager, are processed into English using online translation software. By filtering these original writings, the artist attempts to revalue the initial journal by selecting segments created through the subversion of corporate products. The works monumentalize these neutralized snippets in silver leaf, transmitting the text through burning the surface.
By layering multiples of the same clip, an untitled video calls to mind the subtle shifts viewers from different perspectives face when encountering a work.
Image: Installation view, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada, 2015. Photo: Perry Doane