SUCK MY HOUSE (2021)

Transversing past and present, SUCK MY HOUSE invites the audience to inhabit an imaginative, haunted house where Japanese identities that aim to encompass complementarity, formless forms of Japaneseness are showcased. It consists of a short film set in a 3D model of a Japanese house. The walls are projected with photographs taken in Japantown, Markham, Toronto, which is a place where Japaneseness has been preserved by migrants. It is almost inevitable that migrants would attempt to preserve memories of their homes. When one attempts to preserve memories, one also tends to romanticize the past; one, therefore, begins self-Orientalizing; like an edited photo, the memories become romanticized; such memories sometimes take a small step further away from reality. Such memories, much like fantasies, though based on reality, are filtered through time, space, as well as ones own mind. By layering the house, photographs, and a short film, I highlight the deeply rooted consciousness of Japans complicit oppositioning between Japanese self-Orientalization and Western Orientalization. Japan's self-Orientalizing patriarchy feminizes Japaneseness. It enacts a critique of Japanese transvestite patriarchy: a term coined by Chizuko Ueno. Japan has a history of masking patriarchy in femininity and exploiting femininity. Ueno calls this feminized patriarchy transvestite patriarchy. Japan being a mother-dominated society is a myth; there is no matriarchy. In this structure, Mothers represent patriarchal male fantasies. By inviting the audience to inhabit an imaginative house, I offer a critique of the past and the present built on gender dualism and Orientalism. Through this series, I insist on futures where Japanese identities are not mirrored images of colonial power while delinked from the idea of pure originality and devoid of internalized Orientalism. I wish to suggest a departure from compartmentalizing identities.