Left to right: Natalie Hill, Sophie Constable, Deepti Varghese, Mayu Kanamori, Yuriko Nagata, Keiko Tamura
Our first workshop was led by Dr Sophie Constable as part of ANU’s Immersia 2024, where the final artwork will be exhibited in September 2025. In addition to Mayu Kanamori assisting Sophie via Zoom to discuss her arts practice, it was great to welcome Nikkei Australia’s founding members Dr Yuriko Nagata and Dr Keiko Tamura joining us to share their knowledge. The participants considered and ‘adopted’ internees to create artworks in honour of. It was a wonderful opportunity for participants to discuss connections between themselves and their adoptees – with the assistance of our Japan experts. For example, we spoke of ecological connections such as migrating turtles linking South-East Asia, Japan and even Australia and North America. This helped us make connections between an adoptee from Kumamoto, the turtles of Kumamoto and Australia, and our participants’ fondness for turtles. We now have more than a dozen artists connected to the ACT working with us on our collaborative collage.
Thank you to ANU Team CHL and Immersia, particularly Gouri Bannerji, Lea Collins and Deepti Varghese for working with us!