ɴᴀɢᴏʀɪ/ ʙʟᴜᴇ : 名残 / ブルー
11 cyanotype banners, silk fabric, each 4 x 1.5 feet, fishing lures, hooks and lead sinkers, fishing line and thread. studio Kura, Japan, 2024
During my month-long residency in Japan, I worked on a project that focuses on water, both the poetics and politics of this natural resource and its role in nuclear developments.
In August, 2023 Japan made the controversial decision to release all the treated radioactive water that had been contained in waste barrels since the Fukushima nuclear disaster back into the Pacific. The effects of this decision will take time to fully understand as the contaminants circulate through the bodies of water that connect all living systems.
Working on the coast I created 11 cyanotype silk banners. Capturing images with the sun's rays and the remains of the shoreline.The arbitrary length on the silk fabric divided perfectly into 11 parts. This number became very significant as it is associated with the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011.
As I would work, the lines created on the beach from the receding tide became a new measurement of time. An observation that the Japanese language has a word for: Nagori—which also means the act of lingering on a moment before it passes, the nostalgic sense of bereavement experienced as ephemerality is realized.
A word that extends itself to the incommunicable grief of environmental slow violence and climate catastrophe.My material interest in cyanotype and seaweed (iodine) is sparked not only by their material quality but have historically been consumed to protect the human thyroid in the case of a nuclear emergency.
