Under an Unnamed Flower 

June 26 - July 3, 2022 

Title: Under an Unnamed Flower 
Theater art, performance, music, and dance 
Writing, performance, costume, design, dramaturgy, and composition by Aine E. Nakamura 
Production by La Biennale di Venezia 
Duration: 40:00 

Premiered at The Venice Biennale at The 50th International Theatre Festival

In this 40-minute site-specific performance I presented at Campo Santo Stefano in Venice, I sang, moved and spoke—as I performed as an unnamed flower; a woman who was killed across the Atlantic Ocean; a silkworm together with a parachute and together with the sounds of the loom of Venetian silk textile; my great-grandmother together with the voices of the remaining lace makers on the Burano Island, and about war as a child who would lose her mother, beg and try to sell kimono, and die in hunger; and as a storyteller of and through embodiments of these multiple, connecting an Apple and memories.
In between me, the audience and this site, there are cloths, which are islands, silk textiles, a coffin, and the blanket of a war orphan; the stones which are tombs, foods, and the Apple; the parachute, which is mulberry leaves, high-class silk products, a cloak of a king or silkworm, a forest in which families hide, and the last playground of a war orphan who is in anger and despair about adults and war; and the body part of the parachute, with which I enter and which is the dead body. The gestures of weaving and memories connect these multiple and become, in the end, flower petals, and the last breath and the first breath, for me.
In this Story, which I started weaving with my peace politics*, Peace Article 9 which relates to both of my background countries as a transnational person, into my peace Poetics instead of the politics, and with my questions* about novels "Under the Cherry Trees" and "In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom," became a place for feelings, memories in bodies, families, an apple, and listening, while I address objectification of bodies (“Orientale? Oggetti per chi? (Objects for who?)”) in Venice, which also is seen as a tourist site while there are everyday delicate stories, and the highly complex power and political structure of this world, non-political hands and us being in it. I nevertheless believe, through my performances, in mending, mourning, and sharing of the space about memories, the last and the first breath, and peace.

*For more about my peace politics and artistic questions, please see the official catalog ROT of BIENNALE TEATRO 2022.

Special thanks to the lace makers in Burano at Museo del Merletto di Burano, and the Venetian textile makers at Fondazione Rubelli and Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, with whom I shared time through interviews, and the artistic directors of the International Theatre Festival of the Venice Biennale, Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte