Harmonica

An abandoned house in small island fishing village Kou on Teshima in Japan, is covered with a large orange net. Inside there are over 900 domestic objects wrapped in textiles, all found in the house. Harmonica evokes stories of migration and family history at the same time it preserves age-old traditions of net making and wrapping.

To create the net I worked the with the Kou community and a team of volunteers. Taught by a local fisherman, we made a large fishing net using traditional nori netting techniques, which covered the house. The knotting and wrapping motif was continued in the home's interior, where we wrapped domestic objects, furoshiki-style, in household remnants of clothing and textiles.

Harmonica was a commissioned work for the inaugural Setouchi Art Triennale 2010.