Filmmaker and artist Yuko Nakamura has earned high praise for her unique visual lexicon that tangibly captures subtle movements, seen in works such as A Room of Her Own: Rei Naito and Light. She has also compiled her long-running essay series for literary magazine Subaru (Shueisha) and published Mothering: Our Voice, Our Care in Modern Society. The book features interviews with women of her generation and literary and philosophical quotes from women in history, interwoven with Nakamura’s memories of her childhood and relationship with her mother. Producing a grand, philosophical series of essays in search of moments where mothering takes place, she breaks new ground in women’s literature.
Commissioned by Theater Commons Tokyo, Nakamura produces her first AR film, focusing on children with ill parents. “When you live with parents who are sick, omens of illness and death appear in the house. As the child experiences the world through these signs, its images approach them in high-resolution,” she explains. One-by-one, viewers visit a house that appears formerly inhabited by a family, experiencing a duplicated world from a child’s perspective.
In the age of coronavirus, we are all forced to live in a state of physical and mental anxiety. How much of our indescribable pain and sensations can we heal by experiencing “life” in limbo, nearing death?