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Hatsubon

Imagemaker: Tomiko Jones

Sunday, September 15 - 10:00AM to 10:45AM
ELIF 305

The ceremony of hatsubon marks the first anniversary of a loved one's death, held during the yearly ritual of O-bon, a Japanese Buddhist custom honoring ancestors. This memorial exhibition explores the dynamic tension between tradition and performance through photographs and objects. The work lives in the diaphanous space between life and death, and is a memorial for my father. Its materiality suggests the dualities of the fleeting and the lasting, the ephemeral and the corporeal, and the pendulous state between longing and release. Hatsubon evidences how cultural customs, design, and materials are essential to my creative methodology.


A ritual for the deceased is the sending of a small vessel – a shoryobune – to sea. I made one by splitting, steaming, and bending bamboo into a boat form and skinning it with waxed kozo paper. Robed in simple cotton kimonos we sewed, my mother, sister and I sent the shoryobune at dawn on O-bon from the shores of Hawai'i. The urn, a handcrafted wooden box, is seen in two images: on the shores of the Monongahela River, Pennsylvania and on the Pacific shore, Hawai'i. Hatsubon visits three geographic sites of significance: Pennsylvania, my father's birthplace, Hawai'i, my mother's birthplace and where he is buried, and California, where my parents met and where I was born.


Just a few days before my father passed away, an unforgettable conversation with him guided me to carve an oar from cherry wood. I formed a hanging skeleton boat the length of his body from long ribs of steam-bent ash wood. Performative photographs were made with a 4x5 film field camera, while portraits of my father were made with a medium format Rolleiflex film camera. Three color digital images were from after his passing, a time when I collected images of quiet and transitional landscapes on long walks. Photographs are printed on silk and paper, and the boat and oar are made from handcarved and steam-bent wood.

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Tomiko Jones
Tomiko Jones

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