Living Otherwise: Perspectives on Time, Space and Sense-Making from Okinawa is an exhibition and artist talk series that brings artists and scholars from Okinawa and Tokyo to San Diego, a place similarly shaped by various forms of militarization. It will engage Okinawan communities in San Diego/Southern California in conversation around themes of nation, indigeneity, gender and militarism, with the end goal of proposing new ways of “living otherwise,” together through the power of art.

Registration is open and required:

In-Person Registration | Virtual Registration

An accompanying exhibit will be on display in Geisel Library, 2nd (main) Floor, West from 12 p.m. March 18 through 12 p.m. March 22, 2024.

Presenters and Featured Artists

Mayumo Inoue

Mayumo Inoue is an associate professor of comparative literature at Hitotsubashi University. His publications include the co-edited collection “Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in East Asia” (with Steve Choe, Hong Kong University Press, 2019) as well as the articles on aesthetics and poetics in the works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Charles Olson and Kiyota Masanobu in the imperial context of the U.S. and East Asia in "A Blackwell Companion to American Poetry, Discourse and American Quarterly.” His essays in Japanese have appeared in journals such as Gendai Shiso, Ecce, and las barcas. Inoue is also a founding member of an Okinawa-based art journal las barcas.

Kaori Nakasone

Kaori Nakasone is a photographer based in Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan. She has held solo exhibitions, Temporality (Kobunesha Studio, Naha, 2023) and Unframed (Kiyoko Sakata Gallery, Naha, 2016), and has participated in group shows including Transit Republic: The Pan-Pacific Collective Edition (Arena 1 Gallery, Los Angeles, 2017) and the 27th Hitotsubo Photography Exhibition (Guardian Garden, Tokyo, 2006). Having served as an editor of photography magazine LP from 2008 to 2010, Nakasone began publishing las barcas in 2011 as its chief editor. She co-wrote the essay “Between Studium and Punctum: Tomatsu Shomei and Nakahira Takuma between ‘Japan’ and ‘Okinawa’” with Mayumo Inoue. It appeared in Voice of Photography (Issue 28) in Taiwan and in the edited volume Epistemic Decolonization and the End of Pax Americana (Routledge, 2023). She published a photobook “Temporality” in 2023. 

Satoko Nema

Satoko Nema is an artist born and based in Okinawa, Japan. She teaches as an adjunct instructor at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts. She has held solo exhibitions – Marginalia (Naha Cultural Arts Theater NAHArt, Naha, 2023), Simulacre (Renemia, Naha, 2019) and Paradigm (Omotesanto Gallery, Tokyo; space aotsubame, Kobenesha, gallery atos, Okinawa, 2016). Nema also participated in group shows including LAS ISLAS SOLITARIAS (Sugarcane Room gallery, Miyagi Island, 2023; sponsored by the Okinawa Arts Council), Artist Today (Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum, Naha, 2019-2020), Sharing as Caring #6 Trans-Affekte: Geschichten, Leben und Landschaften (Heidelberger Kunstverin, Germany, 2018-1019), Transit Republic: The Pan-Pacific Collective Edition (arena 1 gallery, Los Angeles,2017), Untimely Encounter 2016: Moment (Alternative Space LOOP, Korea, 2016-2017), among others. She published two photobooks, “Paradigm” in 2015 and “Simulacre” in 2019. In 2023, she co-founded the artist group Aotsubame, whose members established the art gallery Sugarcane Room in Miyagi Island, Okinawa.