In Tectonic, Midori asks us to “look up and see what we are standing on.” She addresses the geopolitical, historical, and economic configurations of the globe, by disorienting both the map and the viewer to experience the world from diverse centers and orientations.
While the Pacific Plate portion of this work takes a large role, reflecting her literal physical positioning as someone who grew up on both sides of it, Midori invites the viewers to enter the space of disorientation and multiplicity experienced by the global majority.
Through Tectonic, Midori continues to explore the power of collaboration and the use of reclaimed or rescued material. Together with local artist comrades and international makers, through the digital platform of Patreon, they transformed waste into art. The wood from architectural salvage is dressed with ropes that had initially failed to meet the manufacturer’s industrial quality standard, then kept out of the landfill, given to Midori, and used in multiple installations. As part of this project’s research, Midori and collaborators also worked on transforming plastic beverage bottles into weaving material. All of this entwines with her connection to traditional Japanese craft and survival technologies.
Reclamation of material and understanding mutual reliance on one another for survival are lessons Midori learned both as a veteran and from her working-class Japanese heritage. Collective responsibility, plurality, and the need for fellowship for survival and sustainability are core to what she does – and ultimately, she believes, for humanity, if humanity is to heal and evolve.
Opening Reception + Artist Talk
Arcana is pleased to present Tectonic, a suspended sculpture by San Francisco artist Midori.
Arcana, 2512 Mission St. San Francisco CA 94110 MAP
World wide / Virtual. “InterFace” Radical public collaborative performance performed with 204 people in 5 minutes, utilizing the common tools of Zoom in uncommon ways. Zoom became the ubiquitous means of human connection during COVID. How might this be used to conjure and conceive a future together? Created and performed by Midori for Sacred Wounds ~ Sacred Wounds is an event centered on the Asian Diaspora… “a ritual, conjuring an enchantingly brighter future… to heal ancestral trauma through ceremony and performance.” February 12, 2021 – Lunar New Year, year of the Metal Ox
2020
Guest Artist. California College of the Arts, Graduate Fine Art course “Practice Practice Practice: On Repetition and Social Forms” for Dr. Julian Carter
She showed us how to see our ropes as archives of our time together. Each individual twist is a record of our attention in the moment it was made, the changing clarity along each length is a testament to duration and our growing skill. It tells us about the thread that pulls from the past into the present; and so we looped back to our readings and their narratives of death, survival, and return.
The students were so happy to have rigorous, focused time to think and talk through ideas–and even happier that they got to follow that with shared studio time to take it all into their bodies in quiet parallel play, hands busy, senses softly open. Midori and I stitched that class together through trained intuition–conviction almost amounting to passion–unapologetically nonlinear perceptions of time–and crossed fingers. Oh and 1/2 inch strips of rag.
Julian B Carter, Ph.D. California College of the Arts, Program in Critical Studies
World wide / Virtual. “Damned Spot” 6 hour durational performance created and performed by Midori for Opera Povera.
FULL PINK MOON: Opera Povera from Quarantine A Worldwide Fundraising Live Stream of Pauline Oliveros’s Open Form The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For_Tunes
Tuesday, April 7th (the night of the Full Super Pink Moon) 2020
FULL PINK MOON is presented by the University of Chicago’s Richard & Mary L. Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry and California Institute of the Arts.
Sean Griffin, the director of Opera Povera, no less than Oliveros herself was, is alive to such moments; and as the moon moved towards its near-perigee alignment with Venus and Mercury that terrestrials refer to, more wishfully than accurately, as the “Pink Moon”—perhaps more wishful than ever, as most of us are nearly frozen in isolation from one another—Griffin seized on the idea of executing Oliveros’ The Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For_Tunes, as if in reverse: instead of simply pulling all of the performers and participants through internet and telecommunications to a single place (the original locus was Manhattan’s Lincoln Center), why not make the cloud in effect the actual platform, convening participants and performers by video-conferencing tools (Zoom) into a live-streamed virtual locus that would unfold as the moon appeared and began its ascent relative to the earth. https://www.artillerymag.com/deep-listening-by-the-light-of-a-full-pink-moon-opera-povera-in-quarantine/?fbclid=IwAR1RTldEnUXZbydC_HzGTIzlQrKZU4yGdV-aHLLiF0sFa6nTgje57xrTdpc
DEEP LISTENING BY THE LIGHT OF A “FULL PINK MOON”: OPERA POVERA IN QUARANTINE Opera Povera’s livestream adaptation of Pauline Oliveros’ “Lunar Opera” by Ezrha Jean Black ·
HuffPost Interviews Midori about InVocation. Full article at: https://bit.ly/2UpABmH
New York, NY. “InVocation” (Sculptural installation & Social Practice) for Sex Worker Pop-up by Open Society Foundations, held in conjunction with the UN Conference on the Status of Women. Curated by Alexi Heller
ArtNet.com “A more personal work is Midori’s InVocation, a 20-foot-tall interactive textile sculpture that appeared in the Leslie-Lohman show. Visitors are invited to step inside the hemp rope curtain, which is interwoven with garments and other objects once used by queer sex workers. They’ve ritualistically retired these once-precious belongings, imbuing the piece with a sense of collective memory…. The work on view is thought-provoking, offering an illuminating portrait of a marginalized segment of society forced to operate in the shadows. “
New York, NY. “Passage” commissioned by Museum of Sex for the Incomplete Araki exhibition. A 35′ hall way of densely woven rope, serving as a liminal passage into the mind of Nobuyoshi Araki, the controversial and prolific Japanese photographer.
2017
Seattle, WA. “Kimono 2: What We Wear” at Seattle Erotic Art Festival
Tokyo, Japan. “Yamamba” Performance for Vanilla Gallery.
San Francisco, CA. “Queer Qraft Qamp “ Family art event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA 2017 “Embrace Change & Creation… The Artist as Embodied Canvas” TEDx
San Francisco, CA. “Dining Room” Installation and interactive experience at Root Division for MFA Never group show. Opening reception February 13, 2016
Seattle, WA. “Hello, Beautiful!” Invited special artist. Installation and interactive work at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Opening reception April 22, 2016.
San Francisco, CA. “Surrealist Fortuneteller” A new experimental interactive piece designed to tap into the participant’s subconscious about fear, love and fortune. Performed at the Battery SF Club for their 1960 flashback Bedlam party
Vienna, Austria. Artist talk “The Trickster at the Crossroads: The Artist as Instigator and Agent of Intersectionality” VN Jaeger & Schwarzwald Gallery. http://www.vnjaeger.com
Philadelphia, PA. “Après Moi, Le Déluge” debut performance at Diabolique Ball
San Francisco, CA. Interactive performance, “Aka Ito – 紅糸”, in 100 Performances for the Hole, at SoMArts Cultural Center. Conceived and curated by SOMArts Curator & Gallery Director, Justin Hoover http://www.fluidr.com/photos/musicpurr/11938580674 http://www.somarts.org/
San Francisco, CA. “Hodoku – ほどく” performance and video for Askew Film & Performance Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts http://www.ybca.org , curated by Madison Young of Femina Potens Gallery
2013
San Francisco, CA. “Prohibition” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts http://www.ybca.org in San Francisco, in the Room for Big Ideas’ ConVerge project, as a special evening for the We Carry Each Other exhibition, by invitation of curator Katya Min & Eliza Barrios. https://www.facebook.com/events/353353988114414/
San Francisco, CA. “MumyoGami – 無名神 - God of No Name” performance for The News, queer arts event, at SoMArts Cultural Center. Video: https://vimeo.com/140348159
Oaxaca, Mexico. “Bridge of Mud & Feathers” an Evoco performance collaboration with Samar Soriano and Eliza Barrios at Gorilla Gallery Oaxaca. Site specific live performance for Dia de los Muertos. http://on.fb.me/1iOPEkx
Oaxaca, Mexico. Evoco Project (paintings) Several paintings for group show at Gorilla Gallery Oaxaca. Site specific theme for Dia de los Muertos.
San Pablo, CA Evoco Project (paintings) Several paintings for group show “Forms of Us” curated by photographer Dana Davis. Eddie Rhodes Gallery, Fine Arts Building, Contra Costa College.
Oakland CA. Art Blender – Evoco as Social Art Practice. Dana Davis Studio.
San Francisco, CA Evoco Project (paintings) Several paintings for solo show curated by Dorian Katz at Gallery CSC, Center for Sex & Culture
San Francisco, CA “Comfort Station” sculpture for group show “Dear Mammaries… Interactive Visual Art Exploration & Innovative Conversation On Our Taboo Topography” as part of San Francisco’s National Queer Arts Festival. Curated by Femina Potens Gallery.
2012
New York, NY. Custom Interior Rope Installation commissioned by Warren Red Design & designer Dieter Cartwright. This was installed at the now defunct Demi Monde Lounge in Wall Street. Sadly Demi Monde owners and general contractor, Lior Darel of lhcmnyc.com have never paid the artist for the work created and has continued to avoid the matter, deeming the issue too trivial.
San Francisco, CA “Prohibition” debut performance for Art of Restraint at Femina Potens Gallery
San Francisco, CA “Spinning Song of the Yamamba – 山姥の紡ぎ歌 – Yamamba No TsumugiUta” performance and video for Askew Film & Performance Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts http://www.ybca.org , curated by Madison Young of Femina Potens Gallery Trailer video: https://vimeo.com/102679868
Sausalito, CA. Flux Tableau art social practice in collaboration with Anna Noel Rockwell & Oona Nelson at ICB Art Center, Gallery III.
2011
San Francisco, CA. “Dining Room” for the group show Building Our Own Picket Fences – Queer Community Arts Project. Michelle O’Connor Gallery in San Francisco, California presented by Femina Potens Art Gallery
Santa Cruz, CA. “Masculine” Solo photography exhibition at Pure Pleasure. Featured artist for Santa Cruz First Friday Art Tour
Seattle, WA. “Objects 1.0.1” sculpture at juried show. Seattle Erotic Art Festival.
2010
London, UK. “Fall” Window installation of foliage, dancer and rope at Coco De Mer boutique in Covent Garden.
San Francisco, CA. “Plastics” solo show of interactive sculptures at Femina Potens Gallery
Seattle, WA “LoveSeat” Interactive sculpture from Plastics series. Juried show, Seattle Erotic Art Festival
San Francisco, CA. “Taken” an art prank performance protest in response to Iranian voting riots, which became the precursor to the Arab Spring. Femina Potens Gallery. Read the review by Violet Blue “Considering Torture, and the Rise of Harsh Bondage / Violet Blue: Erotic art prankster Midori’s show “Taken” puts Amnesty International in the dungeon” http://bit.ly/1Fx6IW8 Violet Blue, digital freedom activist and journalist https://about.me/violetblue
Toronto, Canada “The Ache” an indie ghost story film directed by Keith Lock. Midori was rope stylist and choreographer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068941/
2008
Seattle, WA. “Masculine” photos. Invited artist, Seattle Erotic Art Festival.
2007
San Francisco, CA. “Masculine” photos at Daddies & Dykes groups show. Femina Potens Gallery
Los Angeles, CA. “Tako Hime no Gyotaku” performance with Kumi at West Coast Fetish Ball
London, UK. “Elements of Suffering” performance with Kumi at Torture Garden
Tampa, FL. “Elements of Suffering” performance with Kumi at Torture Garden
London, UK. “Elements of Suffering” performance with Kumi at Torture Garden
2006
San Francisco, CA. “Beefcake by Cheesecake” Two artist photography show of males images. Femina Potens Gallery.
