The Poetry of Presence: Communication

2017-ongoing. Digital photographies

These photographed public installations of poems by Ayaka Abe, a Japanese woman living in Portland, Oregon. As a new immigrant, she has trouble communicating with native speakers in everyday life, being misunderstood and pushed toward their perspective by miscommunication. Abe installs these poems in public-use spaces and leaves them to allow happenstance interactions with unknown community members through the work's erasure, over-writing, and graffiti tagging. Takahashi photo-documents these interactions with Abe's work in hopes of creating alternative communication methods and developing intimacy with people she has never met. Takahashi created Ayaka Abe as her alternative ego to explore freedom of expression without limitations which Takahashi is surrounded by.