MdW Assembly

MdW, an artist-run art fair founded ten years ago is returning in 2022 with a renewed mission to convene alternative artist platforms in Chicago from across the Midwest. MdW is FREE, all-ages, and open to the public.

MdW Assembly will bring together artist-led projects from across the region for a four-day alternative (to an) art fair September 9th-11th, 2022 in Chicago. The assembly will take place at MANA Contemporary, in addition to Co-Prosperity and other Chicago venues.

MdW Assembly : Yoshinojo Fujima aka Rika Lin

September 11th, 3:00pm - 6:00pm.

Virtual Reality Experience by HCL Fellow Yoshinojo Fujima aka Rika Lin

Presented by part of MdW Fair, High Concept Labs (HCL) in Joint Residency with the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary.

Limited capacity and VR headset, RSVP is strongly encouraged. 

Attendees are required to wear a mask at all time while on Mana premises in accordance with current Covid protocols.

Yoshinojo Fujima: Kurokami E{m}Urge #ChooseYourReality

HCL Fellow Yoshinojo Fujima presents a virtual reality experience, "Kurokami E{m}Urge #ChooseYourReality”, co-directed with filmmaker Subhash Kumar Maskara, in Mumbai, India, and created in collaboration with Hekiun Oda, a Grandmaster of Shodo traditional Japanese calligraphy, Nozawa Matsuya, a Kabuki Gidayu Shamisen artist in Kyoto, Japan, and Toyoaki Sanjuro, Ozashiki Shamisen player from Tokyo, Japan

The work’s central design element is a ceiling-hung bamboo hexagonal with painting on rice paper by Hekiun Oda. Outside of the digital center, a lone dancer in kimono (Yoshinojo Fujima) performs to Shamisen. 

Yoshinojo Fujima explains, “The pandemic’s onset coincided with the start of developing this virtual experience. It was an unexpected opportunity to create in a manner that inspires a different avenue of thought, cognition, and realization is an exciting opportunity. Due to the individual and technological nature of the experience, a setting that is indoors, calm, and spacious, such as the HCL studio, was conducive to achieving the intended experience for the individual. 

Kurokami E{m}Urge is taken from a Kabuki play scene, and the intended experience is self-realization of thoughts regarding one’s own identity, the connection between all beings, and the ability to sympathize and relate one’s own beliefs while exploring from within another precept, in this case, during a virtual happening. The piece is a work in progress, and at a stage of development that the experience can be provided using the Oculus 2/Meta headset.”

About the Artist

Yoshinojo Fujima (aka Rika Lin) is “shin-nisei”, part of the postwar Japanese American diaspora. She is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and Grandmaster in Fujima style Japanese classical dance. She has performed her original works and as part of many collaborations at Links Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), where she premiered her full length work Asobi: Playing within Time in 2018. A core member of the organization Asian Improv aRts Midwest, she promotes identity and tradition through performance as well as her teaching practice in Japanese classical dance. She is recipient of a John D. and Susan P. Diekman Fellowship Djerassi Resident Artist (2019), has received residencies at Ragdale Foundation (2019) and High Concept Labs (2018), a Links Hall Artistic Associate Curatorial Resident, 3Arts Make a Wave artist, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist (2017.)

Yoshinojo’s curated series “Beyond the Box”, launched in 2017, centers on female performers and creatives. Her own dance investigations alter the traditional pedagogy of Japanese dance with humor and subtle transgressions by way of questioning ideas of role and identity. Her collaborative project, Suji: Lines of Tradition, with the puppet artist Tom Lee, was featured as part of the 2019 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Links Hall 40th Anniversary LinkSirkus, as well as her Beyond the Box series. In March 2020 she performed in Kyoto, Japan at UrbanGuild as part of the MushiHime Festival, just before the pandemic came into full force. She is a recent Master Apprentice Ethnic Folk Arts Grant recipient, and adapting the pedagogy of traditional Japanese Classical dance with her mentor/teacher.

For more information visit yoshinojo.org.