From March 15 to May 31 visitors to the Asian Centre will encounter a new exhibit by Naomi Kasumi. Naomi Kasumi is an artist-scholar based in Seattle whose work extends to book art, printmaking, video, and graphics. The artist was asked to install a book-related piece as part of a research roundtable organized by Christina Laffin and Jinhua Chen.

The work, “MEM: memory • memorial no. 7 scriptorium,” consists of 8 tapestry-like books with 8 stories. Each panel creates a book out of 108 encaustic cards embedded with Japanese sutra calligraphy, digital images, Xerox images, personal writings, maple leaves, plants, and butterfly wings.

The books were coloured with natural tea dye and bee’s wax. In order to produce the pages in the book, the artist collected nearly 3,000 used tea bags over several years. After layering the variously hued tea bag “papers” into one page, she used white cotton thread to bind the pages together using over 5,000 stitches and knots. (click here for the artist’s statement)

The organizers invite everyone to join us for an introduction to Naomi Kasumi and her work when the installation opens on March 15 at 4:30 pm in the Asian Centre lobby.

This exhibition is a part of the Conference, East Asian Manuscript and Print as Harbingers of the
Digital Future.  The installation was made possible thanks to the support of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the Peking University Institute for the Study of Buddhist Texts and Arts, and through collaboration with the UBC Centre for Japanese Research, Department of Asian Studies, and the Asian Library.