Beams
I met Robyn Mineko Williams in the United States a short time before a crucial turning point in the country’s history. There was a sense of apprehension about what might happen, yet this period—during frequent travels there—was still marked by a certain ease and a feeling of freedom. At SKF/Konstnärshuset, there has been an ambition to bridge the gaps between contemporary art and other artistic fields, which speaks to one of the reasons why the exhibition idea emerged. Early on in the process, history seemed to catch up with us again, in keeping with the notion that history tends to repeat itself. The pull toward Mineko Williams’s work stemmed partly from the personal scope of a historically-shaped narrative that is spoken of very little there, and known even less about here—where this ignorance may also be seen as contributing to a continuation. A key factor lied as well in its universal human perspective, and in the gentle, potentially cathartic space it offers for reflecting on family, love, and generational inheritance.
Ashik Zaman
Robyn Mineko Williams about her work with Beams:
I started with questions to my grandmother, who was ninety-three or ninety-four at the time, about her life before and during “camp”, the word she and my family would use in reference to the incarceration sites they were held in. Japanese American incarceration history, in our family, wasn’t something that was talked about in detail. My grandmother would say things to us while we were growing up about the soldiers, the watchtowers, and the barbed wire. But then my grandfather, who was at a different site, would mention that he was on a baseball team, that he would run around and do what he wanted. So, we got these conflicting blips of imagery from them.
Over time, my interests expanded to include the experience of my family and their communities after they left camp. What was it like for them coming out and reentering mainstream American society? In Chicago, Chicagoans, Japanese Americans, were told to not congregate. They were told to just go forth and…like, “be as American as you can.” Japanese American incarceration was covered in a single paragraph in my high school history book. As I gathered more from my grandmother and my auntie’s stories and learned more about what happened, it made me reflect on my own family, on how my mom and her siblings were raised. I became curious about my grandparents’ choices and how those choices correlated to their experiences pre-camp, in camp, after camp, and assimilating in Chicago.
My mom, who I’m very close with, was also caretaking for my grandma at the time. I was starting to see complexities in their relationship that I had never noticed or been aware of. I was asking myself, How did incarceration impact the way my mom and her siblings were raised? How did it affect how my mom raised me and my brother? And how does it affect the way I’m raising my son now? My exploration and curiosity changed by pursuing that ripple and aftermath of incarceration. Because it’s what we’re living now.
My late grandmother, Nancy Hisako Nishimura, lived for decades in the same midcentury home she and my grandfather built together in Lombard, IL during the late 1950’s. I loved this house; it’s the place where my family gathered together and that was witness to the stories, dynamics, connections and ripples that I’m attempting to learn about today. It became a container for the work.
For Beams, I’ve created a series of rooms to be in and move through, a spatial representation of home, time, and memories that intertwine and inform one another, a bit like waves.
Robyn Mineko Williams is a Chicago-based director and interdisciplinary artist drawn to embodiments of memory, time, lineage, and our relationships with traces left of the people we encounter. She is the founder of Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists (RMW&A), a collaborative platform that intertwines movement, design, and sound to create place-sensitive works that blur the boundaries between performance, installation, and public space. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at leading venues and festivals, with commissions from MCA Chicago, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, among others. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Choreographic Fellowship and the Walder Foundation Platform Award, and has held residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Momentary at Crystal Bridges, and the Chicago Cultural Center. Williams works as a creative director and movement consultant across film, installation, and immersive events, and serves on faculty at the Chicago Academy for the Arts.
Curator: Ashik Zaman, konstnärlig ledare SKF/Konstnärshuset
Sound design: Soundscape by Macie Stewart