Letter to 13 year old 直江
Letter to 13 year old 直江 was originally written as a part of Chain Letters, an online project initiated by artist Christopher K. Ho and curator Daisy Nam for CHART Gallery in 2022. This was after witnessing the height of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. I wrote a letter to 13 year old self, and wrote about being bullied at my middle school in Japan where I experienced a number of bullying “tactics”—name calling, use of fake information against me, humiliating punishment, silence from bystanders, violence, and even restriction of movement within a classroom.
In the end of this letter, I linked human species as bullies to the environment and ecosystems, and the biggest bullies being the global powers—acknowledging that I am now a part of this group due to living in the Global North, especially in the United States. This reality has been setting inside of me very heavily in the recent months of war and genocide in Gaza and amid accelerating climate crisis. (We past 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, as reported in early February of 2024.)
When Andrew Mroczek, the Director of Exhibition at Lesley College of Art and Design invited me to be a part of the exhibition entitled |V|Language, Like Letters|, I shared this letter with him. Andrew asked me if I wanted to speak these words loud or in whisper. I gave a quick thought and said, “LOUD!” He suggested that we would make it as a large scale installation. I didn’t have funds to do it myself, but somehow he made it happen. I believe this installation was as much as his work as mine in this way. It was his vision and encouragement for me to let the work be as powerful as it could be. I learned tremendously from working with Andrew once again, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to share this work as a large installation. This letter is about my personal experiences from four decades ago, but there are many parallel stories that speak to this moment.
Read the entire letter on this link.
Thank you for reading.
Naoe Suzuki
February 1, 2024