Artist from Japan
My mother, 82 years old, has lived in Japan, doing housework for her family for 60 years.
No retirement, no weekend. That’s very common for Japanese women of that generation. Her family feels at ease thanks to her contribution. She is like a comfortable sofa for her family but she doesn’t have her own chair.
I would like to offer her a comfortable cushion, hoping she can take a rest sometimes.
I decorated it in pink because she loves to go out dressing herself up.
A Mother’s Everlasting Love
From that very first breath we take
That first moment when we awake
We feel the warmth of her embrace
See the wondrous smile on her face
Through the years of joy and sadness too
She’s always there to comfort you
When time then comes to leave the nest
She’ll miss us knowing it’s for the best.
When her turn comes, her job now done
She’s cared for you and everyone
Within that treasured family
Her love continues for you and me.
Since time began, mothers have nurtured, loved, taught, protected, cherished and raised their babies, then watched them grow to be killed in war or by war. This inevitable cycle will repeat itself for untold generations unless our mothers’ universal plea to Stop The Killing results in WAR NO MORE!
My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.
On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?
On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Dolores Huerta, SOCIAL ACTIVIST, LABOR LEADER AND CO-FOUNDER OF UNITED FARM WORKERS
Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER
These trophies are awards to the plights that we face as women.
Dolores Huerta wanted to help her students who came to class barefoot and hungry. Through her community work she co-founded the United Farm Workers Union. At 76 years old she continues to lecture and lobby for the UFW, a model used by global labor unions as a testimony to the rights of workers.
Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.
In our endeavors, our lives can be in danger, our pasts can haunt us, our vulnerabilities can be exposed.
Unselfishly, women strive to be all things to everyone; we endure the odds guided by our passion to care for our world families.
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER and Terry Acebo Davis, ARTIST
These trophies are awards to the plights that we face as women.
Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.
In our endeavors, our lives can be in danger, our pasts can haunt us, our vulnerabilities can be exposed.
Unselfishly, women strive to be all things to everyone; we endure the odds guided by our passion to care for our world families.
They fought for the soil, for the children to mourn on.
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
JANET LEAHY, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF “BOSTON LEGAL” TELEVISION SHOW
1 small wooden box
5 Peruvian worry dolls
1 drill
800 holes
1 can black spray paint
countless threads
1 very small crochet hook
one artist
one executive television producer
one collaboration
one phone call
many many emails
one new friendship
Threading Water honors women, mothers, daughters, friends, workers, wives who feel pulled in all directions while trying to stay afloat.
I put earth into Pandora’s box, enclosing meaninglessness within. The box, decorated with various symbols and colors signify the contents. The edges and corners are softened.
The enclosure of earth becomes an oxymoron. A small portion inside stands for the universal. The box is a prayer to the larger form from which it was taken.
The pins refer to the sensitivity of a living body that will feel pain by being injured, but will also start to blossom. The GROUND/ SOIL/ EARTH as READY MADE, an allegory of GAIA (earth), the UNIVERSAL MOTHER AND LAST HOPE.
My grandmother’s sewing box, a gift from her mother, handed down to me by my mother, is my inspiration for Women beyond borders. I have made a tiny sarcophagus of pins, cotton and frayed red velvet – to symbolize thousands of droplets of blood from pin-pricked fingers – all embedded in the wax of candles burned into the night, lighting women’s often unappreciated work of skill, toil and pleasure.
We are born into an intimate relationship of close bodily contact with our mothers. Touch is so basic, the mother of all senses that we tend to take it for granted. Without our noticing it, we have gradually become less and less tactile, more and more distant and physical untouchability has been accompanied by emotional remoteness.
The most tactile receptor on our body is the skin, and with force can be torn to shreds like our emotions. The symbol and carrier of life is the egg, characteristically feminine and fragile. The shell of an egg appears hard, tough skinned, breading through to the secondary layer its protective skin, we find it thin and fragile.
Material alone can define work, if perception is directed first to the material, the ideas in the work are often undervalued and the message becomes secondary to the medium. Hemming in the box in fabricated egg I have reinforced my ideals.
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Pam Praeger, VICE PRESIDENT OF LEARNING, SPOKANE FALLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
One of the first things that Pam said to me was, “I don’t know if anyone mentioned it to you but I lost my daughter in May and I’m still struggling with the loss.” She said it almost apologetically. As I got to know Pam it became clear that Tara, the lost daughter, set a high bar for her mother through the lessons she taught the whole family during her dying. I also learned that Pam and Tara are a lot alike. Even in pain Pam’s first impulse was to help me. I knew instinctively that it was also what Tara would have done. I am grateful to Pam and Tara for their generosity and honesty. During our time together Pam cried more than once and each time she seemed at a loss about what to do with her tears. So I’ve made a Magic box for those tears. Its capacity is endless.
A Mother’s Treasure was created to depict an experience that women share in common– the love and nurturing of our children. The symbol that came to my mind was baby teeth. Every child in every culture sheds its first teeth, and everywhere mothers soothe and celebrate this rite of passage from babyhood to childhood. Just as my two sons grew up and moved into their own adult lives, I give up my treasure – their saved baby teeth – to make a rattle to distract and amuse other babies in other places. Loving greetings to all the mothers and their young.
Mother Earth
Deep within her there is life.
She is encircled by the web of life.
It is no mistake that earth is a “she”
for all that grows does so because of her.
We are the children of this mother.
We are all connected to the earth and one another
through this mystical experience we call life.
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Nita Song, PRESIDENT/COO OF IW GROUP, ASIAN AMERICAN ADVERTISING AGENCY and Ann Enkoji, ARTIST
The starting point of this sculpture began when I asked Nita about pivotal moments in her life and she began to share the stories that created the themes for the box:
— moving with her family to the US to live in Alabama with her aunt
— pinching a young playmate until he broke her nose with a brick
— taking that injury and wearing it as an emblem of her character
— delivering her first child, weighing in at 10 pounds
— her two children’s artwork
— deepening her family and community relationships, especially with her mother
— and her love of the soil
Clay became the natural connection between my art and Nita’s life when she said: “… soil represents who I am. Soil is fertile, nutrient rich and stimulates growth.”
Where have all the mothers gone?
Off like butterflies in the wind.
All to great deeds of glory
Then on to new beginnings again.
The chrysalis of life is a never ending bond
Until the end of time.
Where have all the mothers gone?
Lost the most precious gift, a child of mine.
Loves Me – Loves Me Not
To be loved by the person one loves is everyone’s dream. It is a simple and obvious feeling, yet often pregnant with anxiety. Am I really loved by the one I love? To answer this question many people – or at least young girls – have picked daisies in the summer and plucked the petals to get an intimation of fate’s understanding of the other’s feelings.
That love is not a simple matter is, perhaps, one of our earliest lessons. We must hope that the daisy petals have not been disruptive of health or future. But in former times it was common to try to influence one’s love-life with various herbs. In his anthology Om Folkmedicinens Lakeorter. (Medicinal Herbs in Popular Medicine- 1981), Matts Bergmark has listed plants that are aphrodisiacs, as well as otherwise beneficial. The Valerian root has, for many centuries, been connected with many properties. Its French name is guerit tout, cure all, and in Egyptian mythology it was connected with the cat family and the subject of special worship. In Norse mythology Valerian was connected with Freja. It was an ingredient in aphrodisiacs and, with Mistletoe, was considered to further fertility.
But if fertility has been sought, the fear of giving birth to an unwanted child has been all the stronger. Juniperus Sabina, a relation of the Juniper, is filled with volatile oil in its branches and has gained its name, Sabina, from the Sabine people who lived near to Rome. A decoction of Juniperus Sabina was widely used as an abortifacient. But if the fetus died the mother frequently followed it into the realm of death. For a mere six drops of the ether sufficed for an overdose leading to a painfully slow death.
This is a collaborative effort by mail/email, having started in December 2000 and will conclude December 2002. It asks participants to contribute a recipe from their mothers. The word recipe is open to interpretations: memories/ remedies/ conversations that occur in the kitchen/ contents of a pre-packed lunch/ etc. This is a simple project, based on a chain of words – women/ mothers/ cooking/ kitchen – used within a simplistic context of a stereotype, there are many distinct and different identities. In a kitchen, each woman develops multiple and complex ways to deal with the role of mother cooking. This role (one associated with sugar-coated sentiments) is also the same role that allows a woman (who may have been defaulted into the kitchen) some measures of control over her family. The kitchen can be a very powerful or oppressive place depending on the woman occupying it. I would like to think that every mother occupied it differently. I hope that this project (a small and incomplete record of their many facets) may serve as a humble but deserving tribute to all our mothers. And if it fails to do that, it is at least, a collection of recipes to some very delicious and precious dishes.
The Women's Voices: Ye Shu Fang from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.
I work with containers because they make me happy. Each piece I create becomes a container of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings: a nest, a womb, a secret, a surprise or a giggle. And always, a feeling of being in touch with my female ancestral beginnings.
My containers contain “me”. Being a wife, mother and “Nana” have been the most important things in my life. My baskets honor and celebrate the family. I use words and images of women and children because I want my basket/vessel to have content…to say something. I want to validate the importance of the family and the values and morals it nurtures. My vessels are autobiographical and are the scrapbooks of my life.
Throughout history women have found creative time in their lives to make baskets. Knotless netting, the technique I use to cover the gourds and molded forms, is an ancient, tedious, continuous thread technique that is used for nets, baskets and button holes and is symbolic of women’s work in the home.
Coca-Cola Box Project.
Many years ago after a long and hot morning of doing house chores, my exhausted and thirsty mother would unexpectedly rush through the door. Intrigued, I would rapidly tie my worn out shoes and head to the kitchen. There holding a bottle, as if it were the last one left in the world, was my mom. As she drank it, a smile would slowly illuminate her face. Noticing my curiosity, she pointed at the bottle and said, “This is the sparkle of life.”
In a convulsive world of dispute over territory, religion and culture, men and women face a daily struggle searching for solutions to make this planet a better one for everybody. What has for many years been missing however, is the perspective of the real sparkle of life: The Woman. Just as Coca-Cola illuminated my mother’s eyes, this world would benefit greatly by considering more seriously the ideas and propositions of the woman. So, the purpose of this project was simply to portray and honor the woman not only as the sparkle of life but as the queen of the universe.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary
and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done for the children.
-Anonymous Tewa Source
This collaborative project focuses on the network of relationships which support the mother as she experiences changes in Self identity within the frame of Motherhood. The changing perceptions of Self, whilst universal in Motherhood, differs significantly from person to person. This project involves each member of my personal support group of expatriate mothers in Singapore, expressing their experiences of motherhood in a “foreign” environment. Through the box, I sought to express my personal experience on a theoretical basis, placed in the context of my support network. Thereby the work seeks to reveal the differing experiences and changes in the perception of self, as well as the importance of a transient support network.
This piece of art represents a woman with a steadfast and proud posture. She sits and carries in her lap the continuity of life: her own children. Her face reads of dignity. She carries on her head a pot with a dove: the symbol of love and peace. She creates and conveys life, pride and peace.
Medium: clay mixed with copper oxide, cobalt oxide, magnesium oxide, iron oxide and some kaolin as well as a wooden box
Coca-Cola Box Project.
As long as I can remember my grandmother in Mexico always bought seven bottles of Coca-Cola a week. She has one bottle a day: a few ounces in the morning mixed with two raw eggs; a few ounces with lunch; and the rest with her dinner. She never drinks water at all, just the Coke. She is ninety-two years old.
The box I have created (recreated) is an “open box.” Here the box signifies self-imposed limitations within which we live. Whether in the marriage box, the mother box, the artist box, we notice ourselves playing certain preconceived roles. This becomes inhibiting and sometimes agonizing if we are not aware and perhaps unable to change the rules and roles of the boxes as we grow and change.
I particularly admire people who constantly recreate themselves; who seem unrestricted by society’s boxes. Louise Bourgeois, one of the great sculptors of this century, is one of these people. She looks at things, relationships, her life and her art always with a fresh eye.
One can see Louise Bourgeois in the ceiling of the open box by looking in the mirror. The picture shows her holding a large bronze phallus that she made. The photograph is by Robert Mapplethorpe. Above her is the shell which signifies the soul.
from the time my soft head crowned
through the red hole
and my mother’s spent muscles squeezed me
out of the watery place,
i began leaving home.
the empty tunnel that led me
from my first home
closed up and healed.
as i grew, i sloughed off years
like discarded snakeskin.
she saved the skins.
she wears them around memory’s neck,
to mark time to the cadence of
an ancient song
her mother’s mother’s mother once sang.
Journey of Love is about the relationship between my mother and me. It explores the all-consuming physical and psychoanalytical paradoxes seen in this relationship between mother and daughter, and the problem-solving exercises that may inform one’s point of view about relationships, change, and seeing oneself among others. This exploration leads to the use of the needle and thread, and the act of weaving which symbolizes the journey in mending of a relationship. My mother is my best friend and she is loving, intelligent, patient and reasonable. To weave is to tighten the ties between us. Each act of weaving symbolizes my efforts to mend my relationship with my mother. The use of gold thread constantly reminds me of my mother’s skin because she seems to glow with such warmth and health. The needle attached in-between the weaves with some of the thread wrapped around it symbolizes the act of weaving or repairing which does not end but continues on a more emotional level. The experience in working on the box was illuminating and therapeutic, offering me not only an opportunity to reflect on my life, but also it gave me the strength to be closer to my mother.
The box contains notes with words which were never said to her mother.
Dear Mother,
When I was eighteen, I bought you, with my first salary, a wooden jewelry box. You still keep it, treasuring it. Now, twenty-five years later, I’m giving you this box which treasures words. These are all the words I could have told you during our lives together, but wasn’t able to. These are words I should have told you, dear mother.
Here are all the missing words, just for you. It’s a wonderful opportunity to write them down, to feel their sound within my heart. To prepare a special gift for a special woman: my mother.
Your loving daughter,
Shuli Nachshon
The Women's Voices: Shuli Nachshon, Israel from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.
For years now, being taught by the spider, I weave webs. Small ones and large ones using all kinds of materials. To me it is an infinite source of spiritual codes. I chose the ancient myth of Goddess Athena and the Spider. From the little box arises what has been marking us for centuries, the challenge of becoming Gods.
Two women comprise the myth…Goddess Athena, holder of wisdom, protectress and teacher of the weaving art and the Spider, mortal, outstanding weaver, daughter of Idmon the colorist, mother of Clostiras. Spider challenges Athena to a weaving contest. She creates a beautiful, flawless tapestry. This image insinuates the desire of mortals to reach the divine qualities of the gods to desire to live up to their level.
Athena infuriated by this, punishes the spider sentencing her to live from then on and forever hanging from a thread, transformed into an insect. Being an insect now, the spider weaves its beautiful webs till this day, still creating.
Art contains arrogance.
Art challenges the gods.
Art creates little gods.
We are living in a society where violence and abuse are everyday words. We read it in the papers, we see it in the news, and in one way or the other we have been victims of it.
On May 9, 1997, a group of mothers “Las Madres Angustiadas” and other people joined in front of the Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala, where thousands of candles “veladoras” forming the words BASTA YA! (Enough) were lit, asking for a solution to this problem.
My box unifies all those lit candles in the churches, in the small private spaces and those lit in front of the Supreme Court.
The box, as a symbol of woman and one which will simulate a mother’s body. I will open and leave open so that my body is weightless and free. My face is protected by a condom, but not out of fear, because covered can also mean uncovered.
In my home country, Japan, there is a legend for girls that says that their prospective husbands have their little toes tied up to them with an invisible red thread. I used to believe in this legend as well. In my opinion it is wonderful to be able to believe in such a thing.
Since we’re infants, we are educated to play a role either as a woman or as man. I still remember when I used to play house-dolls with my friends and how much we enjoyed playing the mother’s role, like all the mothers of every mother. It is a simple but very pleasing memory that all women have inside. However, nowadays I often feel a victim of the male order and often wonder what can I do about it.
I was thinking of this as I was making my box and I felt like I was playing with dolls again because I was doing typical housework tasks such as sewing, washing, and ironing.
I hope you will tender my piece during the traveling exhibition as if it were our collective memory, which men will never be able to understand. And please, wash it and iron it when needed.
P.S. Do you know what? In Japanese, when we say “to get married” we use the word “to be tied up.” In the end, every princess will be tied up to their blue prince.
