Artist-in-Residence Capstone Exhibition at the International Museum of Surgical Science

*Extended Show: March 12 – July 11, 2021

Breathe, Fibres of Papers Past is a solo exhibition by Fall 2020 Artist-in-Residence Kioto Aoki constructed in conversation with the collections of the International Museum of Surgical Science. The exhibition intertwines the histories of medical imaging, anatomy, physiology, the Museum’s origin and physical architecture through the technological studies and processes of analogue photography. Adjacent explorations of the physicality of the body and the photographic image proposes Aoki’s work as a sinew that negotiates the poetic ambiguities of embodied time – whilst considering the notion of fibre in biological, material, conceptual and historical contexts.

This IMSS program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

More information at IMSS website.

Friday, June 4, 2021 | 7:00PM CT

Streaming Live from twitch.tv/experimental_sound_studio

Kioto Aoki: Systems of Vision

Systems of Vision is a returning series curated by Kioto Aoki featuring artists approaching sound as image-makers. The featured artists work within a performative framework that considers sound as a responsive system of the photographic & cinematic image. Malleable cycles of image as sound and sound as image create redefine what it means to see sound and hear an image. Program 1 features Jiayi Chen, Liwei Hu and Kexin Yao.

This event is a part of the Experimental Sound Studio’s The Quarantine Concerts series.

Jiayi Chen (born in Chongqing, China) is an artist currently based in Chicago. She works in hand-processed film, video installation, and photography. Her artworks derive from the experience of mentally and physically adapting to foreignness, the shifting idea of home and intimacy, and living relentlessly in translation. Her works have been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Mana Contemporary, Anthology Film Archives, ACUD MACHT NEU, and TANK Shanghai. https://jiayichen.info/

Hu Liwei works with moving image. She holds a MFA in FVNMA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her stage name is Young Coconut, but she is not a rapper. As a practicing “coconut” from Chongqing, China, Liwei does not eat chili pepper. https://huliwei.net/

Kexin Yao is a filmmaker, cinematographer, currently a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Finding happiness from the minutiae of daily life, providing a moment of peace and romance is the original intention of Kexin’s creation of works. By recreating the original video material exploring more possibilities between light and shadow, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. Each story continuing in real world and dreams. https://sites.saic.edu/gradshow2021/artists/%E5%A7%9A%E5%8F%AF%E5%BF%83-kexin-yao

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art Virtual Presentation

Thursday, June 17, 2021 | 6:00 PM CT (7:00 PM ET)

Register Here

Curator Kit Brooks with Tatsu Aoki (Toyoaki Sanjuro), Kioto Aoki, Miyumi Aoki, and special guests Chizuru Kineya and Nobuto Yamanaka 

Follow one of Japan’s oldest musical instruments through its roles in kabuki and puppet theater, in the folk music of itinerant musicians, and in the geisha houses of Tokyo’s Yoshiwara district. Understand how Japanese aesthetics moved from informal to more standardized styles by viewing paintings, photographs, and woodblock prints, and by hearing three masters of the shamisen. Our guides will be curator Kit Brooks, who specializes in the Edo and Meiji periods, and musician and filmmaker Tatsu Aoki, who learned his family’s shamisen repertoire before moving to the United States to pursue a career in jazz, film, and experimental music. Tatsu Aoki will be accompanied by Kioto and Miyumi Aoki on drums and flute. Nobuto Yamanaka, a specialist in the tsugaru shamisen style of Japan’s itinerant musicians, and Chizuru Kineya, a master of the nagauta shamisen music that accompanies kabuki theater, will join from Tokyo.

More information on Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art website.