In September 2021, Barbican Centre featured an exhibition celebrating Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The civic sculpture workshop Reciprocal Landscape was operated in conjunction with it. Inspired by Noguchi’s belief – sculpture should not be restricted to the eyes only, it should be used and played, the opposite approach of ‘do not touch’ ‘do not climb’, the family participants reciprocated with the works created from the previous session(s) with the introduction of different materials and techniques. The temporary civic sculpture park slowly emerged in the garden room of Barbican Centre with a great collection of works that evolved throughout the day. The cherry on top of the workshop was the pirate moment of smuggling one of the collectively created sculptures into the main gallery where Noguchi’s works were displayed, complimenting and completing the ideal of civic sculpture. 

Another engagement during the exhibition is the letter exchange project Noguchi Resonance. Taking up Noguchi’s idea of earth citizen – ‘belonging anywhere but nowhere’, my correspondence narrates through the liminal identity that goes beyond geographical and cultural barriers, yet bonds with nature both materially and spiritually. Here are some excerpts from it:

“This Conservatory accommodates more than 1,500 species displaced from all over the world, including palm trees, banana plants and a cactus collection. It can feel quite magnificent to be in this human-made Eden, walled in by glass panels, if you turn a blind eye to how a botanical garden often exists due to the violent legacies of an extractive colonial practice, with its knowledge production based on the ignorance of indigenous people’s wisdom, histories and harmonious relationship to nature, the brutal displacement of life forms, and profiteering out of exoticising foreign species. And yet, the majestic feeling I have in this urban oasis is genuine as I witness all the plants that have migrated from different parts of the world to survive so beautifully together. They are especially beautiful whilst gently tendered by Noguchi’s Araki Cloud during the course of the exhibition. I realise that the human aspiration to rebuild Eden is impossible without the resilience and effort of the displaced in co-survival and homemaking with other species of various origins.”

“Noguchi’s identification as a ‘citizen of the earth’ also reminds me of my residency at Hawkwood College last May, where I explored the decolonising methods for reconnecting with nature. During the residency, I walked in the green fields that surrounded the College every morning. I sought the different areas of landscapes, smells, textures and energies, where I laid down on the ground and untied my hair. My hair is one of the few ever-growing parts of my body, which I used to make an anchor to Mother Earth. Being replanted like this to the land myself in these moments enabled me to forget about all the borders and hierarchies that socially construct and define who I am with my birth certificate, passport, language and cultural affinities. It felt like finally coming home.”

* Reciprocal Landscape, co-facilitated with Eva Freeman

* Noguchi Resonance, curated by Annie Yael Kwan

* Both works commissioned by Barbican Centre