SUSPENDED LIKE A web spun by a colossal spider, Chiyoko Myose’s A Thread X (Meets) A Thread is a tactile archive of human encounters. Since the installation debuted in 2013, it has toured eight art spaces in Kansas, Missouri, and Japan, where people have added knots to its lattice of colorful thread.
“I hope this piece will go to many places to meet more people,” Myose says. “I’m asking the viewers to participate by adding pieces of thread, which represents a notion of treasuring the moments of meeting people. The work remains in progress whenever it has viewers in the space.”
Its newest home is Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, which is hosting a solo show of Myose’s art from June 2 to August 12. Called Sojourning, the exhibition reflects on what it means to be constantly traveling through life, whether between identities, locations, or cultures. Myose grew up in Wakayama, Japan, and in 1995 moved to Wichita, Kansas, where she continues to live and work.
“One aspect of her work is about her personal feelings of being an outsider, leaving the home and family and culture she grew up with and journeying to someplace new,” says Jennifer Scanlan, curatorial and exhibitions director at Oklahoma Contemporary. “At the same time, the work connects to feelings that we all can relate to: having threads that tie us to the places and people we grew up with and also wanting to establish connections with other human beings.”
Myose studied painting at Wichita State University, her canvases layering expanses of color with geometric shapes and echoing the contrast of Kansas’s sprawling landscapes to the patterns of Japanese life that are her foundation.
About five years ago, she was given a large number of spools of thread and began experimenting with looser structures. Initially, she didn’t think about the relevance between the material and living in the United States. As the pieces evolved, she saw a resonance in making these networks of thread, where the connections are sometimes securely knotted and sometimes frayed, just as our relationships form and fall apart.
Sojourning has four distinct installations, including Bloom, with used dryer sheets shaped into flowers that burst with yellow thread, and Gift, with discarded clothing sewn and braided together. Myose’s large scale installations transform galleries into immersive experiences—an elevation of humble materials with a dash of Japanese art traditions.
“Japanese culture is rich and multifaceted; it’s hard to explain it in one word, but acts of wrapping, tying, and folding are parts of the everyday customs in Japan,” Myose says. “Perhaps it was natural for me to start using fiber art techniques because of these accustomed hand movements.” The exhibition will also feature a chamber music performance composed by Daniel Racer.
Pieces of Thread premiered at her 2017 solo show at CityArts in Wichita and responds to the links and tangles in the work. Sojourning has a debut of its own: an introspective space where origami cranes shaped from steel rods and white cotton thread hover in the darkness.
“The thread’s characteristics—its thinness and sensitivity—look like it’s reflecting the vulnerability of living as a foreigner,” Myose says. “At the same time, its hidden strength and length and its softness and gentleness tell me the possibility to live positively and flexibly, even if I face a change in the environment.”
Sojourning is on view at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center through August. Free and open to the public, Oklahoma Contemporary is located at 3000 General Pershing Boulevard in Oklahoma City. oklahomacontemporary.org
WOMEN IN PERFORMANCE
The new downtown location of Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center will feature a theater named for Chickasaw storyteller Te Ata. For seven decades she toured the world, performing a one-woman show of storytelling, music, and dance. Appropriately, Oklahoma Contemporary is bolstering its performing arts programming with a new series called Women in Performance.
“Through three very different shows, the series gives our community a chance to experience the amazing contemporary performances being created by women artists,” says artistic director Jeremiah Davis. “With every show, audiences will also have the opportunity to learn more about how each performance was made through our artist conversation series.”
Women in Performance launched with Sylvia Milo’s The Other Mozart, which resurrected the memory of Nannerl Mozart, who was once a musical prodigy on par with her famed brother but whose career was stifled when she became an adult, and her compositions were lost.
Also at Oklahoma Contemporary, the sensory experiment Honey is an immersive piece involving material sourced from real-world interviews, examining intimacy between strangers. This work is developed in partnership with the Oklahoma City based Fresh Paint Performance Lab and directed by Katherine Wilkinson. Finally, opening on October 18, Kerry Ipema and TJ Dawe’s One Woman Sex and the City condenses the entire run of the popular television show into a comedic send up—with all the characters performed by Ipema—as a celebration of female friendship.—ALLISON MEIER