Field of Dreams | 2020-2023

The two-channel video work Field of Dreams documents my father’s personal experience in his eco-farm in Tokyo, which he calls his ‘field of dreams.’ Inspired by my father’s farm, the work explores family dynamics, post-Covid well-being, and ecology. While the work begins with the specificity of my own experience as a daughter, choreographer, and dancer, it is a broader reflection on existential questions about our existence and the people we love.

During the pandemic, my father acquired his eco-farm in Tokyo as a way of tending to the land and giving himself some respite during the unprecedented times that rolled over us, including state enforced lockdowns and border closures whereby we were unable to see one another. He would update me with his trials in the garden through photos on Facebook and videos via Facetime, and only late in 2022 was I able to document him in his garden in person as neither of us had been able to leave Japan or Australia respectively during the pandemic. More broadly, in developing this project, I began to see similarities between my own family’s fragmented dynamic and the state enforced displacement of Nikkei peoples, which broke apart many families throughout the last century. The body of work Field of Dreams is a space to recollect memories and examine the complexities of the Nikkei experience during Covid and how transformation can occur to one’s wellbeing and one’s environment through cultivating nature.

I essentially want you to witness it as a father, a daughter, and a garden. In the words of Chinese-Australian writer and artist Mimi Zhu “We cannot be a sibling without a family, we cannot be a seed without a garden, we cannot be in communion without community, and we cannot be human without the earth. We cannot know of love without one another, so let us learn together” (2022, p. 168)