asagao, closing

January 11, 2026

Title: アサガオ (morning glory)
Installation, Performance of voice and body
Voice, body, composition, set-design, performance by Aine Nakamura
Presented at Nokogorini (Hiramatsu Woolen Factory) mhPROJECT artspace
Projection/lighting support by Kenta Ito
Duration of the closing performance: 40:00

For the closing performance, I wrote three poems, one focused on the moment my father's mother sharing a story to my father, one focused on the moment when he became alone, and one focused on the moment when he found me, sharing the story to me. Through this process, my perspective about wounds changed from suffering to love. Below is an excerpt from my recent draft of writing (subject to change), about fragile kindness and listening.

The concept of fragile kindness, which I am trying to explore and propose, seems to resonate with how Brandon LaBelle explains about listening. He writes, “listening is not only an act, it is a sensibility, a subject position, an ethics, and furthermore, a worldview, one that gives challenge to dominant systems that emphasize individualism, human exceptionalism, visibilization, and even vocality, not to mention assertiveness and progress, at the expense of more collaborative, attentive, liminal, and quiet work. Listening is deeply influential and yet so hard to notice.” My introvert father decided to open a heavy door that had been shut for many years to have conversations with me despite the risk of him remembering and reliving his trauma by talking, despite the risk of him showing me the most vulnerable part of him. For his daughter, he prepared before each zoom conversation with his note-taking and all the readings he could do. He wanted to help me and he wanted to move something. I decided to ask him to have conversations with me and to listen to him, witnessing his stories, despite the risk of knowing too much, despite the risk of going to the rabbit hole together—I wanted to attend to him and move something together with him. Without being able to expect anything productive, we decided to have conversations for each other. I believe this experience was shared because we both wanted to find a way to help our younger family member and to rethink our family wounds, without each of us mentioning anything about it. We both knew that unknown wounds needed to be explored, even though we didn’t and don’t know whether it is possible to do so, and even though we are simply two vulnerable human beings. This listening/sharing was an act of fragile kindness. It was not the actual content that we were mainly attuning to and caring for. It was more about the silence, hesitation, things that slipped through our mouths and faces, shying away, hiding, sorrow, moments when a talk became unsmooth, and understanding the emotional waves that we particularly cared for and were kind to wait and be patient with. His round eyes were what I tried to see and listen to, and his closed eyes and shying-away eyes were what I tried to hold, as well as my own inner eyes and feelings that went to the listening journey together.

asagao, opening

November 21, 2025

Title: アサガオ (morning glory)
Installation, Performance of voice and body
Voice, body, composition, set-design, performance by Aine Nakamura
Presented at Nokogorini (Hiramatsu Woolen Factory) mhPROJECT artspace
In partnership with Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses
Projection/lighting in collaboration with Kenta Ito
Duration of the opening performance: 31:38

The exhibition アサガオ asagao (morning glory) (November 21 - January 11, 2026) included four performances and the installation project in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. I drew on my listening to people in the city and listening to my father about him and his mother Sakiko, who was from Ichinomiya. She resided there until her family's thread-making factory went into corruption and the family got dispersed in poverty. The project focused on hidden stories behind labor and business in Ichinomiya and our family wounds, and recognizing the process of conversations themselves as love. The soul work gives meaning to our relationality.

My father shared with me that the oldest brother of my father’s mother painted morning glory around the time she was born, and explained about her fragile kindness through the image of morning glory. As I find fragile kindness as the core of myself, I continued my exploration on this topic (link to the poem asagao. The English version of this poem was first shown at hands on tape at The Lab in 2025.). Upon the first performance on November 21 2025, I focused on seeking and showing a light out from and regardless of darkness.  For this showing, I did not perform from my own wounded hole, which I could have used easily to present a dramatic performance, but from my kindness. (It has been my interest to think about how to consider mental health of artists and audience members and therefore to find a way to be mindful of my hole while being honest upon performance.) Then, through the performance on November 30, choosing fragile kindness amidst Sakiko's suffering was a strength, I realized.

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