Saturday, September 16th to Saturday, September 25th (final locations and times TBD)
Sakiko Yamaoka graduated from the Musashino Art University in 1984 as an oil painter. Her interests turned to performance in 1991. Since the early '90s her work has been presented at international festivals and events in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Poland, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, Indonesia, Israel, Canada and Thailand.
My plan in your festival with Japanese community. I would do 2 action performances.
The first one is titled "We are Elegant". Performance will be in suitable place, interesting and historical. Only women of middle age and older ages will look very strong, I think, what do you think? I read a book about Japanese brides, who went to Canada to marry with Japanese men, who know only through photos.
The second one will be special for Vancouver. I like to create it after I visit you. Perhaps, I would try to see Japanese middle age men who doesn't marry there, before only I saw their photos. And do imitation wedding party there, probably.
I define my art-works as sculptures depicting action and time and relationship between artist and audience, artist and materials, in which I attempt to create an example of the human condition.
Human beings are contradictory creatures. When one is giving a presentation of any kind to one's society, it is necessary to unify thoughts and focus in order to avoid conflict; however, by doing so, one ends up losing a second or a third sense.I am interested with these senses that can be got rid of "extra senses".
In my art-works, I often involve an audience and materials, neither of which I can control well. Audience is a kind of others in a society for me. And most of materials I chose are everyday necessities for us. Both are typical objects for human condition in our life.In some works, there may be interaction with audience or passengers. In the other works, materials, for example, the water, salt and grain spill over, the fruits fall onto the floor, the other items or objects break very slowly. And at the end of which, a person, namely me, fall down on the floor or work hard due to exhaustion. Human bodies are objects, too. Their works depends upon "the others emotion" and "gravity". Both the process and result are included in my art-works in order to share the experience and show how the notion of ambivalence, ambiguity and unpredictability evolves and demonstrate how I cope with the situation. I would like to find our varied possibilities and that for the one time it must be only one condition. What was the best? In the way, I would relieve "an extra sense" in each situation, I hope.