Kanade Yagi - Metabolism of the Wall

Metabolism of the Wall

2018Mixe Media Installation & PerformanceLoad na Dito, Manila, Philippines

Metabolism of the Wall features a Filipino spiritual medical practice called tawas*. The artist employed the method to the abstract images she found under the old wall painting, inventing a different means for tawas. She set a video camera in front of the wall to let it witness the whole process of what would happen there. After the old paint had been peeled off, two performers, Bunny Cadag and James Harvey Estrada, who each had their own respective perspectives toward spirituality and healing, participated in the project. Through an exchange of their perspectives, a performance was developed and presented before the wall and an audience. During the performance, Estrada, as a person able to read the energy from the wall, critically mentioned how the artist may have been forcing the wall to reveal its story in order to make her own work. Cadag played the role of a kind of a spirit. After the performance, Yagi painted the wall, and so the metabolism of the wall had come to pass.

Works in many different mediums were developed during this project; a site-specific installation, a collaborative improvised performance, mixed media video installation and video documentation, and an ongoing project series. A work that developed from this, entitled Trace the Wall, was exhibited in Arts Tropical, Okinawa, Japan.

*Tawas is one of traditional medicinal practices in the Philippines on which Yagi has placed particular focus in her research. Tawas healers (locally called "magtatawas") diagnose the causes of a client’s suffering by using daily materials like an egg, a charcoal, a candle, a stick, strings, and so on. Roughly, there are two way to get answer to diagnose. One is to find spicific images on the abstract shape which is made by those materials instantly. Images carry a narrative to healers and clients. Another is to get yes/no answer following some steps with materials. Healer is led to the certain diagnosis by some questions and answers.