Imagine Finding Me
Imagine Finding Me is a series of unique double self-portraits which are created around a collection of childhood photographs taken from Chino's family album. In these digitally manipulated and composite images, Chino's present and past selves are snapped together in various locations and situations. As Chino describes, 'the digital process becomes a tool, almost like a time machine as I'm embarking on the journey to where I once belonged and at the same time becoming a tourist in my own history'. In this, her first UK publication, her autobiographical texts and photographs are combined for the first time.
If,
again
I have a chance to meet,
there is so much I want to ask
and so much I want to tell.
1976 and 2005 Kamakura, Japan
Double self portrait
1982 and 2005 Paris, France
Double self portrait
Summer
'When I start playing with a memory I take the whole place as a theatre. It becomes a theatrical space, where I act out and direct in my own memory'.
At the age of 10, Chino Otsuka moved from Japan to England to attend Summerhill School, a self-governing boarding school founded by A.S. Neill.
These photographs from the series Summer deal with one aspect of her experience as a Japanese person living in England. They show the artist revisiting both the site and her memories of the time at the school.
In much of her work, Chino chooses the self-portrait as a way of exploring her cultural identity - a double identity of Japanese origin and continued influence, yet one also firmly rooted in western culture. She addresses the task of maintaining a relationship between these two backgrounds through her work and her daily life.
Her photographs are carefully constructed to place an emphasis on the relationship of the figure to a specific space. She does this by employing techniques used in cinema and film making such as specific lighting, staging and narrative to allow viewers to develop an emotional response to her work.
Although Summer is based on a very personal recollection, the series plays on universal experiences of school and the endless English summers of childhood to evoke the viewer's own associative memories.
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