Content warning: Mention of suicide.
Nao Uda is a transnational Japanese artist and photographer whose works have been showcased in Japan, the United States, Canada, and Taiwan since 2006 [1]. Nao currently lives and works in Taiwan where she completed her graduate studies and now presents her work in three main mediums: ceramics, photography, and paintings.
Her pieces feature her alter-ego, an “imaginary figure” named “NU” – named after her initials, NAO UDA NU — of which she intentionally offers little to no descriptors for audiences to make their own interpretations and allows her to relinquish artistic control of the piece once it is public.
The non-gendered creature has appeared in a multitude of her artworks, including through clay, painting, and even culinary forms as cookies. NU serves as a spiritual “third person” who provides balance to Nao’s artistic life. The figure is also an important vehicle that possesses its own identity and with which Nao expresses her artistic voice: “NU has been travelling for [a] long time. I think if there was no NU, I might be more shy and [not have had] chances to go somewhere” for artist residencies and the like.
Nao considers herself a storyteller through her art and says that “different mediums are like different languages I speak” to audiences, much as one would speak in Japanese or English depending on the conversational context. For example, Nao notes how since she learned photography in New York City at the School of Visual Arts, it is easier to talk about its technicalities and concepts in English as opposed to “translation Japanese” that does not sound as natural. Photography is a key medium for Nao and she considers it to be a practice in which she is more fluent than in other languages, whether in the traditional linguistic sense or through art. It is the format most like Japanese for her and thus is most close to her heart.
Nao’s works on Japanese Canadian (JC) identity delves into her past through a family tree project that explores intergenerational tensions on language and memory, including an exhibition of 45 photographs titled “Words Fail Me” now housed at the Royal Ontario Museum related to her grandfather, who was born in Vancouver and left for Japan in 1941 only months before JC Incarceration began [2]. She crafted fictional memories of him through the photograph series and brings in critical Japanese Canadian themes of immigration, Nikkei diaspora, and historical trauma. She describes her JC project as about “the presence in the absence” in reference to her relationship with her grandfather and the aspects of Canadian culture he brought to her and her family’s upbringing.
“I am trying to visually translate the intangible stories to tangible photographs and ceramic objects…”
Nao Uda
Nao also has a significant body of work that researches the cultural relationships and mutual resilience between Taiwanese and Japanese peoples in relation to their historical and colonial ties. Her work on Taiwan is inspired by her late Taiwanese-Japanese friend who died by suicide after grappling with her dual identities. Nao was inspired to work and complete residencies in Taiwan to better understand her friend’s life and “try to experience what she might have done in Taiwan”; the themes of life and death subsequently came to influence and motivate her artistic practice.
https://www.naouda.com/How-to-Translate-the-Family-History
As a parallel to Nao’s previous projects, she is currently working on a photo-based project about the memory of her maternal Japanese grandfather based on his stories from the Pacific War in Japan: “I am trying to visually translate the intangible stories to tangible photographs and ceramic objects. The stories were lost in a way when he passed away last year, but I would like to use art to preserve them and pass them on to the future.” Nao understands her work to be a nuanced, emotional method of universal storytelling to which her audience can relate.
Key Themes: Memory, emotion, identity, accountability
Interview conducted on August 16th, 2019 by Izumi Sakamoto and Caitlin Morishita-Miki.
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References
[1] Nao Uda. (n.d.). http://www.naouda.com/
[2] New to ROM: Nao Uda, Words Fail Me (2013-15). https://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/new-to-rom-nao-uda-words-fail-me-2013-15