The first UK solo exhibition at White Rainbow by acclaimed performance and video artist Chikako Yamashiro (b.1976, Okinawa, Japan). Yamashiro, the winner of the Asian Art Award 2017, dramatises the lesser-known aspects of Okinawa’s contemporary reality, while questioning dominant historical accounts of Japanese and American occupation of the islands. The site of fierce battles between the US and Japan at the end of World War Two, Okinawa still has a high concentration of American military bases, occupying around 20 per cent of the land — despite the wishes of many of its indigenous inhabitants. Yamashiro’s practice engages with political and social histories of Okinawa to create provocative and haunting works, drawing on oral accounts and often utilising her own body. The exhibition ran from 15 March – 28 April 2018 and the accompanying catalogue on Chikako Yamashiro includes installation photographs alongside a newly commissioned essay by Isabella Maidment and an artist response by Claire Potter.
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