Hatsubon explores the dynamic tension between tradition and performance through photographs and objects. In the diaphanous space between life and death, the materiality of the works suggests the dualities of the fleeting and the lasting, the ephemeral and the corporeal, and the pendulous state between longing and release. The ceremony of hatsubon marks the first anniversary of a loved one’s death, held during the yearly ritual of Obon, a Japanese Buddhist custom honoring ancestors. A ritual for the deceased is the sending of a small vessel–shoryobune–to sea. I made my own version by splitting, steaming, and bending bamboo into a boat form and skinning it with waxed kōzo paper. We sewed yukata, simple cotton kimonos, and on the dawn of his hatsubon, sent the boat to sea from the shores of Hawai’i in his honor.
Just a few days before my father passed away, an unforgettable conversation with him guided me to carve Bring me the Oar and the length of his body from long ribs of steam bent ash wood in Skeleton Boat.
Hatsubon visits three geographic sites of significance: Pennsylvania, my father’s birthplace, along a river he grew up on; Hawai’i, my mother’s birthplace where we set the boat to sea, and where he is buried; California, where my parents met and I was born.
First exhibited September 2016, Desai | Matta Gallery, California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA
Supported by Arts at California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA and University of Wisconsin-Madison Vice Chancellor for Graduate Research Education, WI