Ken Okiishi (b.1978, US) works across disparate media systems. His work hovers uncomfortably between matter and memory, perception and action, image-networks and language-systems, technology and emotion. Whether its through videos, texts, paintings, objects or even currencies, he repeatedly incites moments when the “real world” loses its coherence and representational schemes fall apart.

Ken Okiishi, A Model Childhood (“family history video for insurance purposes” circa 2009), 2018
DVD, colour, silent
78 min
Courtesy of the artist, Reena Spaulings Fine Art NY/LA, Pilar Corrias Londres and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo

Ken Okiishi, A Model Childhood, Honolulu, Hawaii, circa 1940, 2018
Inkjet print
Courtesy of the artist, Reena Spaulings Fine Art NY/LA, Pilar Corrias Londres and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo

Ken Okiishi, A Model Childhood, (Telegram message, April 2020), 2020
Inkjet print
Commissioned by Manifesta 13 Marseille
Courtesy of the artist, Reena Spaulings Fine Art NY/LA, Pilar Corrias Londres and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo

A Model Childhood is a meditation on the artist’s country of birth, the USA, as much as the concept of home itself. Stemming from Japan’s merchant class, Ken Okiishi’s paternal ancestors lived thoroughly transnational lives in the early 20th century. But during World War II, they were forced to reconfigure their identities when the US government decided to strip Japanese Americans of their rights and, in many cases, confine them to concentration camps. A Model Childhood features a photograph of the artist’s father celebrating Boys’ Day in 1940 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the artist’s grandfather threw the family’s recognisably Japanese possessions into the ocean. This photograph survived in the artist’s family as a gateway to a world that was abruptly cut off. Hanging above the fireplace across from this family photograph, and rolling across the room, a scroll shows a message that Okiishi wrote on the Telegram app when the artists and curators of Manifesta had an open exchange in early April about what to do as Covid-19 intervened in all of our realities and political systems. In the ostentatious music salon, a ‘family history video for insurance purposes, circa 2009’ shot by his mother in 2009 documents every object in the Okiishi household.

* Work conceived for the occasion of Manifesta 13 Marseille