The Sakaki Tree, a Jewel, and the Mirror, 2020
mixed-media installation; silkworm cocoons, mohair fleece, traditional
Japanese rayon bunka thread, and porcelain 

Wood carving and stands: Minoru Yamamoto
Lighting Design: James Proudfoot
Production Assistance: Cherry Wen Wen Lu
Ceramics Assistance: Julia Chirka

The Sakaki Tree, a Jewel, and the Mirror was created by Cindy Mochizuki during a 2020 Burrard Arts Foundation (BAF) Artist Residency program in Vancouver, BC. This work explores Japanese legends and folklore through 50 figurines with heads, feet, and hair. Together with their shadows they make 100 enigmatic entities. In this installation and its activation through intimate performances that use the figures as tools for divination, Mochizuki tells the story of Amaterasu, the Shinto goddess of the sun and the universe. After clashing with her brother, the god of sea and storm, Amaterasu shuts herself inside a cave of darkness. Her absence plunges the Earth into chaos. To coax her from her cave of mourning, the other gods offer three sacred objects: a 500 branch Sakaki tree, a magatama jewel, and a mirror. 

Mochizuki often uses performance and ritual in her practice. In an interview during her BAF Residency, Mochizuki shared, “Because I make performance and tell stories within my art practice, often the objects or puppets become a tool to further advance the story. They can also be an extension of the body, as in costume. In this installation, I realized that the objects I was making were not meant to lie dormant, and as the larger suite of them formed, it became more and more evident that they could be used for some other form of telling. I felt they had a kind of spirit even if they were quite tiny, small, simple and delicate.”

The theatre created around these miniature puppets conjures their role as performance objects. Quietly dormant, each tiny figure contains its own story within the greater narrative that the installation imparts. They are non-human, strange, and yet oddly familiar, with animalistic and fantastical qualities. Like lucky talismans, or archetypes, they recall the puppets of traditional Japanese Bunraku theatre. By representing Japanese legends anew, Mochizuki makes ancestral connections and shares these stories as a way of generating a deeper understanding of Japanese culture.