This exhibition is a collaboration between artists Grauls, Ohata and Harris looking at the boundaries and borders of what we call 'ours'. Concerning our skin, our land, our sense of identity.
The artists who are from various backgrounds, Ava Grauls (Belgian / South African), Makiko Shimizu Harris (Japanese / American), and Megumi Ohata (Japanese / mix Korean) explore the theme of macro and micro boundaries in relation to their own cultural experiences of crossing over land and living within their own skin.
Grauls predominantly works with the management of memories through territory mapping. Her paintings investigate the national culture of a nation through historical maps, and how institutional processes and documenting histories have affected our identity.
Harris explores the relationship of legacy of familial ties, manipulating family crests. Her paintings reframe and reclaim mixed heritage through an abstraction of traditional kimono patterns worn by four generations of women in her family.
Ohata explores past traumas, ghosts, and non-human entities through their wearable sculptures made of artificial skin. Their work explores the identity of the diaspora through semi-translucent skin garments, pursuing the importance of accepting one's own skin.
Ava Grauls, Megumi Ohata and Makiko Shimizu Harris met at the Royal College of Art, London. Their mutual interest in creating work around the diaspora fueled their artist collective towards the Edge exhibition in Hiroshima City.
After a successful exhibition in Hiroshima City, these artists want to bring their artistic expression of what it means to live within and across boundaries at both the intimate level of our bodies and the larger context of territory.