Cindy Mochizuki | Tides & Moons: Herring Capital
Nanaimo Art Gallery 150 Commercial Street, Nanaimo, British Columbia V9R 5G6
Cindy Mochizuki, "Tides & Moons: Herring Capital," 2022
Digital Still from animation, watercolour, graphite, digital. Courtesy of the Gallery.
Opening Reception Friday, October 21, 7pm
Throughout her practice, Cindy has developed multi-media installations, fictional audio works, performances, animations, drawings, and social collaborations that relate to Japanese Canadian experiences in B.C and Japan. She works with members of these communities and often includes her paternal family’s history both within internment camps and as repatriated Japanese Canadians in Japan after the war.
In the early 1920’s Japanese Canadian fishers lived and worked in Nanaimo at Hammond Bay (also known as Kujira Bay), Departure Bay, Shack Island (a way station for salmon and coho fishers traveling north), and Saysutshun. While Nanaimo had been known as a coal town for half a century, it also had 43 Japanese herring salteries. Due to the unexplainable abundance of this fish during a short window of time, and a demand for salted herring as an important export to Asia, Nanaimo became known as a herring capital.
Employing memory work, archival research, and oral histories, Tides & Moons: Herring Capital brings accounts of the past together with fantastical worlds to encourage new understandings. Animation, miniature sets, and storytelling props reimagine the complex relationships between salt, shorelines, and migrant labour.