Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2023 - Student interview - 06. Mai Sakaguchi

MAI SAKAGUCHI: Hi my name is Mai Sakaguchi. And I studied visual arts at Chatswood High School. So my body of work is about the stories that my mother has told me and shared to me and just about the strong emotions and kind of like feelings of cultural displacement that she kind of experienced through relocating from Japan to Australia.

She faced a lot of barriers in terms of linguistic barriers, having to acculturate culture into a different kind of new environment and sacrifice some parts of herself. One of my 2 biggest inspirations for my body of work was William Kentridge. So he was introduced to me by my teacher. We studied some of his films. And he kind of looks at charcoal drawings as well through like that kind of erasing of memory and stuff and the layering of different lines and textures.

But I also did look at a lot of his printmaking works. And I really liked the way that he would express facial expressions through the really, really harsh contrasts and lines. And I guess I found them really poignant and really wanted to pick up some of his techniques and stuff.

I also found David Noonan. He's a photographer. He basically took a lot of photographs of Japanese Noh theatre. And he would layer them with a lot of different kind of fabrics and tapestries and kind of experiment with texture. And I really also found that really resonating, especially with my own kind of cultural ties. I wanted to focus on Noh theatre.

So as you can see, my work contains a collection of prints. And I used different types of techniques and experimented with them. I kind of used the basic monoprint-- so just black and white on paper. And I also experimented with relief rolls, using different colours to capture different types of emotions and this idea of incarceration.

I also played around with multiple plate prints. So that involves a process of layering prints and inks to kind of create more clashes with colours. And I guess I kind of wanted to explore a lot of chaos and sense of fragmentation.

So I started with taking photographs of my mum. And so basically, throughout that process, I really kind of tried to pay homage to Noh theatre because through the positioning of the cameras and stuff, because in Noh theatre, they focus on the way that the mask kind of tilts upwards or downwards to show different kind of emotions.

And then after that, I got the photos out. And then I basically etched a plate. And then I underwent all the chemical processes and then, after that, began the process of printing. I felt hesitant to go into printmaking because I didn't know how well I could capture what I really wanted to-- like, my own intentions and how the scope for which you can kind of experiment with and express everything.

Right now, I've deferred for uni. But I'm going to start next term. And I'm going to pursue a double degree at UNSW in commerce and media. So I guess I kind of want to pursue something that I can integrate or exercise some of my creativity because I think that's kind of what my parents have always supported me in doing. So yeah, I hope that in the future, I can continue to put in a bit of creativity in everything that I do and come out with good outcomes as well.

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