Akina Yoshitake López

Departing from my relation to the Uchinaaguchi language, from what today is called Okinawa in Japan, the project focuses on a possible negotiation between presence and intelligibility of languages. It is a three-part installation contemplating the opacity of this language I can not speak through imagined cross-sections on a photograph using this same language as method. This method draws from the idea that words are somehow able to delineate or contour things. What kind of spaces could be opened? 

The lack of linguistic articulation becomes visible as the unsettling power of making rooms, but still some traces remain, trembling and waiting for a word (as if it is a language that remains in the ear, not coming through the throat).

The project is contextualized within the diasporic flows of families who migrated from Okinawa to Brazil pre-WWI, creating a relation between landscape and language. Uchinaaguchi and a photograph taken at a shoreline in Okinawa are a study case from which I can start, as my interest is in their relation with other languages and imaginaries.  My hope is that through a collection of videos, audio, and images, the person can find resonance with whispers and other unsorted phonemes that linger in one’s ears.