Picture Brides at an Exhibition

Arrival, Chino Otsuka's exhibition at the Nikkei National Museum, transformed the room into a darkened, temple-like space, featuring four large projected diptychs, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and a black and white archival image of a young Issei picture bride on the other, like my own grandmothers. The artist spoke in her British accent about moving to England from Japan for school when she was ten and how this project, based on her NNM residency work, extended her previous photographic explorations into personal history, memory, and identity. I love hearing visual artists talk about their artistic process.