Akiko Hatakeyama

(8:23) -- Music – 2019, Video – 2021

 

Being pretty, womanly, only to be stolen and buried by others for greed. We appear and disappear, come back and go away. まだら – madara is a lament for the dead and alive whose souls have been taken away. The word “Madara” is a Japanese word metaphorically indicating a phenomenon that is sometimes appearing and sometimes not appearing. The musical composition was created in 2019. I created the video for "Sanctuary, a Performance."

まだら−Madara expresses the hardship that many women and minorities in society experience. We always face the risk of being stolen, whether our ideas, resources, sexualities, health, or lives. Medical and social discrimination and racism toward people of color became worse, or rather reinforced, during the pandemic. The threat of being attacked has stolen our freedom to live normally, too. More people recognized aggression during the pandemic, but it has always been there. There are a number of missing indigenous women in the U.S., and there are silenced women who are in misogynistically oppressed cultures such as Japan, where I grew up. The music and visuals of まだら−Madara together represent the current condition, and a lament and anger toward that.

The video component of this work was originally created by Akiko Hatakeyama for the "Sanctuary" performance in collaboration with Ana-Maurine Lara, Akiko Hatekayama, Courtney Desiree Morris and Rosamond S. King, under the artistic direction of D'Lo.