TIED TO A NIGHT WE NEVER MET

Presenting a series of paintings and organza-based organic wall sculptures, Kelli Maeshiro’s “tied to a night we never met” assesses the influence of collective and individual relationships on one’s identity and its formation through migration and memory. The exhibition draws narratives from the different transition points in the artist’s life as an international Japanese adoptee to an Okinawan-American family based in Hawaii, where she was eventually raised and then finally moved to the Philippines, where she now lives. This trail of events, which informs Maeshiro’s art practice, is made complex by the complicated histories and relationships between the Okinawan population to Japan, the United States, and the rest of the Asia Pacific. Thus, the images and materiality present in Maeshiro’s works combine unexpected methods and elements that mirror the multitude of conditions representing the artist’s life through objects that would link time and distance.

Merging traditional and contemporary art-making techniques, Maeshiro portrays both the past and the present in solidifying the self through works that embody the super-melodic, the serene, and the task of forgetting. The works incorporate textiles, traditional dyeing methods, western-style painting, paper casting, shibori, and illustrations that build up in layers to create a soft haze that shrouds the subject. Hence, these images declare Maeshiro’s assertion of ‘the self’ beneath inherited situations and conditions passed on throughout generations.

Born in Ishinomaki, Maeshiro received her BA in Studio Art (Painting) from Willamette University in Oregon and completed artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Women’s Studio Workshop in New York. Her works have been presented in exhibitions in the Philippines, the United States, and Germany. She lives between Manila and Hawaii.

Gwen Bautista