We Are Komachi (Jeffrey Angles, Sae Esashi, Hiromi Itō, Yuko Kaseki, Tomoko Mori and Kanoko Nishi)
About the Artist
We Are Komachi is an interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together five female artists working across literature, dance, music and visual art. In the exhibition space at ATM6, these artists from diverse disciplines come together to create shared experiences in an active dialogue with the audience.
Hiromi Itō is one of the most acclaimed contemporary poets and a pioneering feminist voice in Japan. For more than two decades, she lived in Poland and the United States and is currently back in Kumamoto, her hometown in Japan. For ATM6, Itō is working on a new novel centred around the legendary ninth-century female Japanese poet Ono no Komachi. Komachi was renowned for her exceptional intelligence, exquisite poetry, elegant calligraphy and striking beauty. But as she grew old, her life became marked by poverty, and she is said to have died a beggar. Based on the long investigation on Komachi’s life, poems, legends and myths, Itō juxtaposes her own life experiences with Komachi’s, connecting the life of a woman living more than 1200 years ago to the contemporary time. With Hiromi Itō’s imagination and the power of poetry, her work penetrates centuries, linking, synchronising and merging two temporalities into one – artistic time through the lens of women’s lives and their political, social, and cultural positions in society. This novel will be translated into English by Jeffrey Angels and presented at a series of improvisational actions and performative installations – blending poetry, bodily movement, visuals, and sound, and inviting the audience to take part. We envision the project as a dynamic and collaborative “jam session,” where artistic time is collectively reclaimed by the author, a dancer, visual artists, a musician, and the public in Manchester, using multiple senses and sensors.
Work being shown at ATM
Installation including animation by Sae Esashi, hand dyed, paper, ceramics, durational performances, readings.
