Mai Sakaguchi Haha no kyujo (mother’s plight)

My body of work pays homage to the pain of migration: a deeply personal experience shared by my mother. Moving from Japan to Australia, she was constantly met with cultural and linguistic barriers and a relentless sense of displacement. My work uses plate prints, relief rolls and monoprint processes, layers of colours and images expressing incongruity, intended as an erratic oscillation between emotions of fear, acceptance, despair and grief. Layers of Japanese traditional Noh theatre transcripts represent the nexus between my mother's homeland and the performativity of the diasporic experience; acculturation can be likened to the ‘performance’ of Western traditions.

Influencing artists:
William Kentridge
David Noonan
David Samuel Stern
Francis Bacon
Rembrandt van Rijn