Exercising the In-Between

Exercising the In-between challenges the exclusivity of national identity through a composition of exercises written from people’s perceptions of Wabi-Sabi, an aesthetic concept part of Japanese national identity. The project traces how the constructed image of Wabi-Sabi stems from Japan’s self-consciousness of the gaze of other countries, and the role it plays in shaping Japan’s identity abroad and within. The installation stages the exercises performed by the designer, who was born in England to Japanese parents, and uses this personal position of being ‘in-between’ to demonstrate the absurdity of having to perform acts of ethnicity to live up to people’s perceptions of national identity.