Landscape of Lagoon in Nauru (detail), 2023, Cyanotype on linen fabric

Un / Weaving
Haji Oh

ALISON BRADLEY PROJECTS

526 W 26th Street, Suite 814

New York, NY 10001

646 476 8409

alisonbradleyprojects.com

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A LISON BR A DLEY PROJECTS
Alison Bradley
Sofia Thieu D'Amico
Claire Foussard
Yuya Kawata

Portrait of the artist Haji Oh. Photograph by Keizo Kioku (2018)Un / Weaving
Haji Oh
March 7 - April 20, 2024
Curated by Eimi Tagore-ErwinIntroduction
Haji Oh (b. Osaka, 1976) is a third generation Zainichi Korean artist, born and raised in Japan and now
based in Australia. She draws on her family’s migration from Jeju Island to Japan in the 1930s to tracetranspacific memory through dynamic experiments with textile, photography, and cyanotype. She studied
Dyeing and Weaving at the Kyoto City University of the Arts, receiving her MA in 2002 and PhD in 2012.
Oh is a recipient of the 2024-26 Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA).
Un / Weaving showcases a selection of artworks representative of Oh’s oeuvre as she gives expression to
the liminality of communities that are often obscured by national histories. Through the labor intensive
processes of weaving, unraveling, and printing, the artist uses textile to explore the three-dimensional spaceof memory, revealing hidden layers and blank spaces that mirror the variability of reconstructed narratives.
Oh’s early works, Three Generations (2004) and Three Generations of Time (2004) express the“unknowability” of her grandmother’s migration story after she passed away in 2001. Combining
portraiture and traditional dress, these works address Oh’s identity as a Korean in Japan and questions
about her grandmother’s past. In the late 2000s, Oh began to incorporate extensive archival research abouttranspacific migration into her work. Her experiences in Toronto as a visiting scholar at York University
and intern at the Textile Museum of Canada led to Another Story (2010), expanding her introspective
practice to remember the experiences of incarcerated Japanese-Canadian women during WWII. Oh moved
to Australia in 2014, where she started her grand-mother island project series (2017–Present), tracing
untold stories of migrant labor communities that have crossed the Pacific Ocean. Un / Weaving features
three chapters of Oh’s ongoing project, including the first of the artist’s site-specific Seabird Habitatscapes
series (2024–Present). Juxtaposed with a projection of an archival British map of the Pacific from 1798,
Oh combines cyanotype and hogushigasuri (warp printing ikat) to recontextualize the idyllic landscapes ofNauru and Papua New Guinea, contending with the logic of empire entangled in cartography, phosphatemining, and labor migration in the Pacific from a bird’s-eye view.
Each installation of Oh’s work in a new space is a form of ritual. As she shifts seamlessly between the
personal and global, the memory of Oh’s grandmother is carried into the present as both a grounding
figure and metaphor for inherited pasts. Un / Weaving highlights the artist’s distinct approach to textile
and memory, creating an intimate space for viewers to reimagine the past while reflecting on the limits ofnational boundaries.

4「2004年、はじめて訪れた済州島
祖母と母のチマ・チョゴリをまとう
島の風をはらむチマ
それらの記憶をつむいでみる
その糸はいつしか私の皮膚となる」“In 2004, my first trip to Jeju-Island
I wear my grandmother’s and mother’s chima chogori
And they swell with the Island’s wind
I’ll spin these memories
These threads that will someday become my skin”— Haji Oh, Kuruyama Museum of Art, Okayama, 2019

Three Generations, 2004, C-print in custom frame, 38 1/2 x 8 5/8 x 3/4 inches

Photograph by Dario Lasagni

6Three Generations of Time, 2004, Photo on sanbe fabric (hemp cloth), 17 5/8 x 196 3/4 inches

Photographs by Dario Lasagni

7Three Flowers, 2004, Silk hanbok, tie-dye, brush dye, embroidery, 55 1/8 x 59 inches
Photograph by Tomas Svab

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Another Story, 2010, Jute rope, silk yarn, audio, 39 3/8 x 15 3/4 x 3 7/8 inches
Photograph by Kazuo Fukunaga

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Photograph by Yuzuru Nemoto

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Untitled (A House of Memory Traces series) , 2019, Linen yarn, 35 3/8 x 118 1/8 inchesPhotograph by Yuzuru Nemoto11

Los Negros Island 1949, 2022, Cyanotype on paper, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches

12Phosphate fields, 2022, Cyanotype on paper, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches

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Aerial photography, Momote, 2022, Cyanotype on paper, 11.7 x 16.5 in

Phosphate fields in Banaba Island, 2022, Cyanotype on paper, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches
14Landscape of Lagoon in Nauru, 2023, Cyanotype on linen fabric, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches
15Mother Mountain, 2023, Cyanotype on linen fabric, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches
16Road in PNG and railway tracks in Christmas Island, 2023, Cyanotype on paper, 115/8 x 16 1/2 inches
17Textile as a map-mt.k #2, 2023, Linen, four-selvaged cloth, warp-faced pick-up patterns, 11 3/4 x 23 5/8 inches

Photographs by Dario Lasagni

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Textile as a map-t.i #2, 2023, Linen, four-selvaged cloth, warp-faced pick-up patterns, 11 3/4 x
23 5/8 inchesTextile as a map-j.i #2, 2023, Linen, four-selvaged cloth, warp-faced pick-up patterns, 11 3/4 x 23 5/8 inches

Photograph by Dario Lasagni

19Seabird Habitatscape #1 - Bunda Lagoon and Mother Mountain, 2024, Linen, cyanotype, warp-faced pick-up patterns, four-selvaged
cloth, and projection
Photograph by Dario Lasagni

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Photographs by Dario Lasagni

21WRITINGS

“Oh Haji's work stands out for its balanced emphasis on both the broad
strokes of history and the nuanced stories of individuals often overlooked in
grand historical narratives. Her textile creations, through the mediums ofdyeing and weaving, represent the intricate tapestry of geopolitics, women's
history, and the narratives of migration and immigration.”— Selection Committee for the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA), 2024

Curatorial Statement
Born with two names, Haji Oh (呉夏枝, お・はぢ) is also known as Natsue Okamura, using the Japanese surname
taken on by her family after they emigrated from Jeju Island in the 1930s. The artist began to openly embrace thename Haji Oh when she was 17 years old, a bold choice that disclosed her Korean ethnicity to her peers in Japanas she formed a new community at Kyoto University of the Arts and began her career in textile arts.1
I was first introduced to Oh’s work six years ago by the stunning anthology Still Hear the Wound: Toward an
Asia, Politic, and Art to Come, which radically explores the intersections of postcolonial memory, feminism,and contemporary art.2 On the occasion of Oh’s first solo exhibition in the US—where the myth of Japan’s
ethnic homogeneity is still normalized—I offer the following essay to contextualize her work within a transpacifichistorical framework. Now viewed on American soil, a land echoing with immigrant stories, Oh’s work seems to
expand and contract, impacted by the experiences of diasporic audiences that reside here and encounter her work,
many of whom have carved out lives here as a result of US militarism in the Asia Pacific and around the world.
But even as the artist herself engages with the interplay of individual and universal storytelling, it’s importantto remain wary of allowing her work to become reduced to a narrative representational of all Zainichi Koreans,or Korean residents of Japan. In each of Oh’s works in Un / Weaving, the individual mark of the artist’s hands
is unmistakable: methodically planned patterns, textures, colors, and tensions juxtaposed by the spontaneous
outcomes of her weaving processes. Her work is deeply personal, bringing nebulous traces into the real, tangible
form of textile—a choice to materialize silence into being, so that the abstraction of memories cannot be theorized
into oblivion or become instrumentalized for political agendas. Rather than becoming trapped within the binary
logic of identity politics, Oh expertly—and gracefully—navigates herself around the pitfalls of majority/minority
discourses that are bound and separated by the restrictive framework of the nation-state.3 She has always taken atransnational position, exploring the in-between as her starting point.
***

Oh, Haji. “What does the Ethnic Costume Represent?” Asia Colloquia Papers 1(3). Toronto: York Centre for Asian Research. 2011.
Lee, Chonghwa (ed.), Still Hear the Wound: Toward an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come. Translated by Rebecca Jennison and Brett De
Bary. Cornell University Press. 2016.
3
Lionnet, Françoise and Shih, Shu-mei (eds.). Minor Transnationalism. 2005.
1
2

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Although her family has been in Osaka for three generations, Oh has never been fully Japanese, from her passport
to her own perception of self. Existing in the category of “forever foreign” is often what it means to be a Zainichi
Korean.4 Around half a million ethnic Koreans live permanently in Japan and are known as Zainichi Koreans,
irrespective of whether they have citizenship or not, or for how many generations they have been settled in Japan.5
Oh’s doubled identity is a historical marker of the Empire of Japan’s colonial control over the Korean Peninsulafrom 1910-1945. Japan’s kōminka assimilation policies pressured Korean imperial subjects to take Japanesenames (sōshi kaimei) as part of widespread forced “Japanization” that took place in the mid 1930s.6 After thewar, Koreans were able to restore their original names, but many Zainichi Koreans chose to retain their Japanesenames to avoid discrimination in Japanese society. Oh’s decision to use her Korean name publicly in the late
1990s seems particularly daring, considering the tumultuous atmosphere in Japan at that time. Following the
Shōwa Emperor Hirohito’s death in 1989, the nation underwent a postcolonial reckoning as debates about thenation’s aggression during the Asia Pacific War came to light after 50 years of silence—sparking a conservative
backlash that further reinforced a lasting climate of historical revisionism and whitewashing.7 As she began toshare her background with more people, Oh realized that due to the silencing of memory, she and her Japanesepeers were “mutually ignorant” of the complex history between Korea and Japan, which “cast a shadow on [her]private relationships.8
It seems fitting that at such a contentious moment, the young artist began reflecting on her family’s migration to
Japan. But when her grandmother passed away in 2001, Oh lost a crucial opportunity to learn the details of her
journey, and from it, her larger family story. Why had her grandmother migrated to Japan from the small islandof Jeju in the 1930s as a young teenager? How had that major shift impacted her life and what had it been liketo “become Japanese” before, during, and after the war? And more immediately—what did all these unknowns
mean for Oh’s life in the present?
The works selected for Un / Weaving demonstrate the elegant trajectory of the artist’s engagement with thesequestions over the past two decades. There are three distinct stages of her practice organized in the gallery space,which narrate the artist’s growth from the deeply personal, to the intentionally transnational, to Oh’s present
attention to the entanglements of global movements, memories, and history.
Zainichi (在日) literally means “residing in Japan.” Although the classification for Zainichi residency status does not only refer to
Koreans, socially the term has become synonymous with the ethnic Korean population in Japan, including from both North and South
Korea. The Korean Peninsula was divided during the Korean War, decades after the majority of migration had taken place.
5
Ryang, Sonia and Lie, John. Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan. University of California Press. 2009.
6
In both colonial Korea and Taiwan, the Empire of Japan’s kōminka policies were enforced between 1937-1945 during total war mobilization.
7
A particularly controversial (and highly mediatized) topic is the Imperial Japanese military’s role in the system of sexual slavery known
as “comfort women,” in which approximately 200,000 women, many of whom were Korean, were subjected to systemic sexual violence
between 1932-1945.
8
Oh, Haji. “What does the Ethnic Costume Represent?” Asia Colloquia Papers. 2011. pg. 4.
425

The artist’s earliest works, created 20 years ago, document her grieving process and offer insights into her youthfulcuriosity as she searched for clues about her past by visiting her ancestral home of Jeju Island for the first time.
Bringing images of Jeju into the gallery space in the US is evocative on multiple levels. Jeju, a tranquil, volcanicisland to the southwestern tip of the Korean Peninsula, was the site of a massacre in 1948-49 while the island wasstill controlled by the United States Military Government in Korea following the end of Japanese colonial rule.9
During the struggle for control of the Korean peninsula, a leftist rebellion force was brutally suppressed due to US
policy towards communism in the region.10 As a result, tens of thousands of locals were massacred.11 Knowledge
and information about this massacre were completely suppressed by the South Korean government for 50 years,
but among the Jeju Zainichi community in Japan, such as Oh’s family, the violence was experienced with horror
from across the sea and its memory was passed down through generations.12 Oh’s work does not directly touchon this history, but the tropical landscape of Jeju that appears in Three Generations (2004) and Three Generationsof Time (2004), and the motif of the island in Nautical Maps (2017-Present) serve as ghostly reminders of
this painful memory, and the implications of the US’s role in this history. What must her grandmother haveexperienced, hearing about the atrocities committed in her homeland while living in Japan as a young woman?
Oh turned to the transnational as she progressed in her career, finding ways to engage with her grandmother’s
painful memories through the analogous stories of other communities. Another Story (2010) confronts JapaneseCanadian internment through the fictional narrative of a young woman starting to remember her experiencesof the concentration camps she lived in as a child when her uncle passes away.13 The resonance between Joy
Kogawa’s novel Obasan and Oh’s own experience of losing her grandmother was the impetus of Oh’s pivot fromthe personal towards larger stories of diasporic women who exist between national boundaries with multiple
identities, much like herself as a Zainichi Korean.14
At present, Oh has taken on a more global lens. Her works have become monumental in size as her gaze and research
have also expanded, delving into the geopolitical circumstances of transpacific movement with a focus on the
overwhelming, but often overlooked, presence of migrant Asian labor in the region. Oh’s newest series, Seabird
Habitatscapes (2024) and the ongoing grandmother island project (2017-Present) demonstrate the culmination of
The United States Military Government in Korea (USMGK) was the official ruling body of the southern half of the Korean Peninsulafrom 1945 until 1948 with the formation of the Republic of Korea. American troops withdrew in 1949.
10
Ryang, Sonia. “Reading Volcano Island: in the Sixty-fifth Year of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising.” Asia Pacific Journal -Japan Focus. Vol 11, No. 2.
2013. pp. 3-5.
11
The exact number of victims is unknown. The South Korean government generally claims 14,000-30,000 casualties, while Jeju Zainichi
communities put forward a figure closer to 80,000. At the time, Jeju’s population was 270,000. Ryang, Sonia. “Reading Volcano Island: in
the Sixty-fifth Year of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising.” 2013. pg. 4.
12Ryang, Sonia. “Reading Volcano Island: in the Sixty-fifth Year of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising.” 2013 pg. 3.
13
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto, ON: Penguin, 1983.
14
Oh’s Ama’s Home / Boat Floating on Memory with the Color of Emptiness (2018) traces the migration of female divers that moved along
the archipelagic coastlines of islands between Jeju, Tsushima, Fukuoka, and Ishikawa. House of Memory Traces (2019) considers the experiences of war brides from Japan living in Australia in the early 20th century.
926

the artist’s aptitude for looking beyond national frameworks, for considering community formations that occupy
liminal positions rendered invisible by widely understood notions of “national belonging.”
As I write about Oh’s artwork from within the emergent field of Transpacific Studies, a discipline that largely
prioritizes movement and exchange between Asia and the US, Oh’s recent work reminds me of poet, scholar,
and activist Teresia Teaiwa’s pertinent warning for researchers: not to lose the center in their focus on thegeographical edges of the region. Teaiwa warned that if scholarship “continues to achieve its critical edge fromthe edges of the Pacific, its contributions to knowledge production will remain largely impotent, irrelevant,and unwelcome in the face-to-face realities of the islands.”15 Especially since moving to Australia in 2014, Oh
has tapped into an elaborate, macro perspective of the Pacific region as a whole, moving past the edges to reveal
the layers of history lost in between. Harnessing the nautical language of cartography, seafaring, and fishingcommunities, the artist searches for her place within new instances of collectivity that includes the thousandsof islands that have always connected the seafaring routes of transpacific movement—islands that have been
subjected to the violence of resource extraction, settler colonialism, militarization, incarceration, and overtourism for centuries.
Seen in person, the physicality of Oh’s labor-intensive art practice mirrors the perseverance experienced bydiasporic communities—but the soft intricacy of her textile work opens up to audiences in unexpected ways.
Without being direct and didactic, Oh draws out moments of tranquility from grief, creating beauty fromanguish. New community can be created amongst Oh’s works viewed together in the gallery space, as we arereminded that true belonging is determined by multiplicity, existences that have “no beginning or end; always inthe middle, between things, interbeing.”16

Teaiwa, Teresia, “Lo(o)sing the Edge,” in Sweat and Salt Water: Selected Works. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. 2021. pg. 63.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. University of
Minnesota Press; First edition. 1987. pp. 24-25. Author's emphasis.
15
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Object Descriptions
Three Generations
myth of Japanese ethnic homogeneity. Significantly,
Three Generations (2004) is one of Oh’s most wellOh left the two outer frames empty, representing the
known works, created as part of her early Costume as“unknowability” of those from the past and future.
a Second Skin series in the 2000s. At this time, theartist was grappling with the loss of her grandmotherBy imaging herself in Three Generations, Oh
who passed away in 2001, leaving an absence of family
reinforces the enduring existence of her family’s
history that Oh has gone on to explore in her body
lineage to Jeju Island, an act the artist hasof work for the past two decades. Oh created Threereferred to as “the process of remembering (orGenerations after she lived for two years in South
actively not forgetting) the history of Korean
Korea to learn about her ancestry and study theresidents in Japan, and passing on that history.”2
sewing and restoration of chima chogori (a traditional
Korean dress) at the National Folk Museum in Seoul.1 Three Generations of Time
For Three Generations of Time (2004), Oh used aPowerful in its simplicity, Three Generations draws
thermal transfer process to print a procession of selfon the vernacular of a family portrait, presenting
portraits onto a long scroll of sambe, the hemp cloth
three photographic self-portraits of the artist in a row
traditionally used to dress and honor the dead atof five wooden frames. Oh shot the film photographs
Korean funerals. The photographs were taken at thein 2004 when she visited her family’s ancestral homesame time as Oh’s work, Three Generations (2004),
of Jeju Island for the first time. In each of the threewith the artist pictured wearing her grandmother’s,
portraits, Oh is pictured wearing a different chimamother’s, and her own chima chogori into the tropicalchogori—first, her grandmother’s white dress madelandscape of Jeju Island—her family’s ancestral homeof the white fabric popular among older generations;in South Korea. The sambe cloth is the remaining
then her mother’s in deep red; and finally a pink andswath of the original cloth that Oh’s grandmotheryellow one that the artist sewed for herself by hand.
had prepared for use at her own funeral, imbuing
For Oh, clothing and textile retain memories—
the piece with her memories and life. By imaging
becoming a second skin that carries the experiences
her own figure on the meaningful cloth, Oh activelyof those who created and wore them. Donning her
takes part in reconstructing memory, a salient part of
grandmother and mother’s dresses in the islandfamilial mourning processes.
where her family came from, the artist embodies three
generations of women in her family. The nostalgia of
In each frame, Oh’s clothing alternates between
family portraiture draws viewers into a familiar space,
the three chima chogori, allowing a simple yet
while the repetition of Oh’s portrait in traditional
cryptic narrative to emerge. The artist cycles
Korean dress actively interrupts the long-embedded
between her own (pink), her mother’s (red), and her
Chima chogori (치마저고리), usually spelled “chima jeogori” in the English transliteration of the traditional Korean garment, is often
used interchangeably with the word hanbok in a Korean context. Oh intentionally uses the phrase and spelling chima chogori, transliterated
from the Japanese katakana (チマ・チョゴリ), due to its culturally specific use and meaning amongst the Zainichi Korean community inJapan.
2
Jennison, Rebecca. "Personal Geographies, Public Spaces: Contemporary Art on "the Borderlines" in Japan." Journal of Kyoto Seika University. 2007. pp. 205–207.
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grandmother’s (white) dresses, producing a colorful
stripe of images flowing horizontally for the length of
the scroll. Although the saturated, tropical landscapeof Jeju seems to seamlessly blend into an endlesspanoramic image behind her, Oh’s body is containedin a loop—a recurring dream sequence with no clear
beginning or end. She walks towards the viewer,
surveys her surroundings, then turns to walk downa path to almost disappear into the landscape before
returning again to the foreground. The “coming andgoing” rhetoric established by the narrative sequence
evokes the precarity of geographical migration as wellas the variability of memory over time. The small
size of the photographic transfer allows Oh’s face
to remain anonymous, while drawing viewers in tolook closely, creating an intimate space between theviewer’s body and the ceremonial cloth.

experience growing up in Japan, where her teacher
referred to her as nenashigusa—a plant with noroots, floating atop the water like a lotus.
Oh plays with the saturation of color as a device
for evoking the different degrees of and layers ofa memory. The dyed interior is visible through thesheer white fabric of the dress, forming a contrast
between the muted exterior and the bright colors
hidden beneath. When it is installed in space, thedress naturally falls open at certain points, drawing
the viewers’ gaze into the brighter folds of thegarment’s interior while simultaneously rendering
it inaccessible. The fabric’s sculptural structure isemphasized, mirroring the artist’s understandingof memory as a three-dimensional space. The artist
explains:

Three Flowers
When my grandmother passed away, my mother kept
Three Flowers (2004) combines Oh’s memories
her chima chogori without disposing of it… One day, Iof her grandmother and mother’s experiences,strongly felt my grandmother's presence from it. The
contained in one colorful dress created out of her latechogori held untold stories, the things my grandmothergrandmother’s chima chogori. Oh carefully unraveled
didn't speak about and I couldn't ask. I realized thesections of her grandmother’s two-piece garment,
dress harbored the 'silent memories.' I thought about
then resewed it into one connected dress. Although
tracing the history of a woman whose story remains
she wasn’t able to hear her grandmother’s stories
untold, through this chogori.4
directly before she died, Oh felt she could weave
her grandmother’s unspoken memories through Another Story
her own by creating works using her grandmother’s
Another Story (2010) is a multimedia sculptural
belongings. The artist meticulously embroidered awork created after Oh lived in Toronto from 2008delicate flower pattern through the original fabric
09 as a visiting scholar at York University and internof her grandmother’s dress, and finished the workat the Textile Museum of Canada. At the time, she
by brush-painting brightly colored flowers in red,
had been striving to find new ways to engage withpink, and blue dye on the inside of the dress. Oh
the complexity of memory in her work, and foundchose to paint lotus flowers, as a nod to her mother’s
unexpected answers while reading Joy Kogawa’s
Matsuoka, Rie. “Oh Haji-san—Zainichi korian to shite no aidentiti kara umareta, sehitsuna sekai [Haji Oh—A tranquil world born fromher identity as a Zainichi Korean].” THE BIG ISSUE JAPAN. Iss. 159. 2011.
429

novel Obasan (1983) about a Japanese-Canadian
woman retracing her family’s memories ofincarceration and the transnational impacts of
WWII. From 1942-49, Canada forcibly relocatedand incarcerated 22,000 people of Japanese descentfrom the west coast for the sake of “national
security,” regardless of their citizenship status. While
fictional, Kogawa’s vivid first-person depictionsof the challenges faced by different generationsof Japanese-Canadian women before and after
the war prompted Oh to recall the experiences ofher grandmother and mother living as Koreansin Japan. She “sensed a universal narrative in
the novel… a story of and for people who, in
response to powerful forces, crossed borders.”3

Oh considers the unraveling of textile as a way todeconstruct texts, a process Another Story explores
through visual and auditory representations ofintergenerational storytelling. The process ofreading Obasan, akin to the tactile experience ofhandling textile fibers, stirs memories for the artist.
The textural material and its flexible, yet threedimensional form also resemble the structure of
retrieving a memory. Memories attached to thewomen’s voices almost seem to be extracted from thepages of the book as the loose and fibrous structureof the pages are re-coiled into a long braid, resonantof braided hair. Oh calls further attention to thevarious ways in which she bundled and retwisted
the unraveled material, using tightly-wrapped redsilk yarn to create moments of brightness in theotherwise subdued color of the jute.

Taking care not to generalize the hardships faced,
Oh considered the commonalities among immigrantcommunities, including unspoken memories, Untitledgenerational trauma, and discrimination. For
Untitled (2019) is part of a larger series entitled A
Another Story, she invited 41 women, including her
House of Memory Traces, the third chapter of Oh’smother and sister, to read excerpts from a chapter
ongoing grand-mother island project (2017-Present),of Obasan that takes the form of letters written
which traces the memories of migrants across theby the main character’s aunt as she describes her
Pacific. A House of Memory Traces follows theexperiences in Canada before and during WWII. The
memories of war brides who emigrated from Japan
intermingling voices of women reading in English
after the second world war. Untitled is the only
and Japanese produce a fragmented yet evocative
figurative piece included in A House of Memory Traces,
narrative in the exhibition space—giving expression
hanging high above the viewer to form the vague
to an overlooked period of Canadian history whilesilhouette of a woman’s body, with a long braid fallingalso engendering connections to other stories. Thisto the floor as it unravels like a memory lost to time.
experiment in reading is accompanied by a soft
sculpture created out of jute rope, which Oh tenderly
Untitled makes clear the variety of labor-intensive
unraveled to create the motif of an open book. Even
approaches Oh has to weaving, as well as theas the jute sculpture appears to be light and fragile,
importance of unraveling as a metaphor for
its stillness evokes a compelling sense of heaviness.
deconstructing memory. Starting from spools ofHaji, Oh. “Oh Haji’s Letter Collection,” in Inner Voices, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa [catalog]. Toshiya Yasui:Tokyo. 2011. pg 137.
330

black warp threads leading loosely upwards to where
the artist has woven them into a flat textile, the work
demonstrates the importance of the four-selvage edgein textile works. Four-selvage cloth refers to textile
made with a self-finishing edge that prevents it fromunraveling or fraying on all four sides. The woven
part of Untitled ends abruptly and tapers off with
only the warp threads leading down to the floor; thematerial appears to be weighted down as the artist
condenses it into a thick braid, eventually cascading
onto the floor in a disassembled heap, creating
palpable tension that contrasts the whimsical feelingof the threads unwinding from the spools. Oh playswith making and un-making in this piece, harnessing
the shifts in texture and empty spaces between thethreads as a visible reminder of the nonlinear, gapfilled process of passing down transnational histories.
Spiral History – TIDE
The exhibition includes the seven cyanotypes Oh
created for Spiral History – TIDE (2023), a zine
developed in collaboration with writer/translator
Michiyo Miyake. As a creative duo, Oh and Miyake
are known as “textus.”
Spiral History – TIDE documents the history of
the islands where Australia's offshore immigration
detention centers are located, connecting stories
of labor migration, imperialism, and incarceration
between Australia, Japan, and the islands across the
Pacific and Indian Oceans. Australia’s detention
centers continue to be in use today and have long
been subject to controversy for their inhumane
conditions. The zine textus created in collaboration
specifically examines the history of the detention
centers during two periods of intense population—

the peak of the phosphate mining industry in the
19th century, and the Imperial Japanese occupationof the islands during WWII.
For this collaborative project, Oh created cyanotypesof archival images from the National Library ofAustralia, applying the cameraless technique topaper and woven linen. The unpredictability of
the cyanotype printing process makes the works
precarious and hard to discern, much like the “barelives” of incarcerees, refugees, and asylum seekers
who have been held in Australia's detention centersover the years.
Made up of four images, Los Negros Island 1949
(2022) depicts aerial views of Lombrum Naval
Base, an air base built by Korean and Japanese labor
during the Japanese occupation of Manus Island(now Papua New Guinea), used as a brutal detention
center in the early 1950s. In Phosphate fields (2022),
Landscape of Lagoon in Nauru (2023), and Aerial
photography, Momote (2022), the artist’s cyanotyping
process completely abstracted the archival imagery,producing obscure but highly textural patterns
reminiscent of warp print ikat patterns. In Phosphatefields in Banaba Island (2022), Mother Mountain(2023), and Road in PNG and railway tracks in
Christmas Island (2023), the strong horizon lineof the landscape allows the images to retain theirrealism to a certain extent, bringing forth the motif ofconnected landscapes also present in Oh’s Nautical
Maps series.

31without names, without freedom
or any form of agency over their own lives.
a state of being deprived of
the right to have rights,
identified and controlled bynumber and barcode.
lives without legal protection,
identity suspended.
a state of being nobody;
how long can the human spirit endure that?
Prolonged detention with no end in sight,
even prayer abandoned.
those who once paddled out into the night sea
risking their lives have forgotten how to dream.
- Excerpt from “V,” Michiyo Miyake,Spiral History - TIDE.4
Nautical Map series
Textile as a map-mt.k #2 (2023), Textile as a map-t.i#2 (2023), and Textile as a map-j.i #2 (2023) are thenewest additions to the artist’s Nautical Map series(2017-Present), a return to the first chapter of Oh’s
ongoing grand-mother island project (2017-Present),
which traces the memories of migrants across the
Pacific. The woven works in Nautical Map harness
the familiar motif of landscape to conceptualize
intimate connections between faraway lands. For
these three works, Oh moves beyond the confinesof the nation-state by placing locations she holds
near into conversation with each other. Mount
Keira (Textile as a map-mt.k #2), an island near Oh’s
current home in Wollongong Australia is linked
to Oh’s ancestral homeland of Jeju Island, South
Korea (Textile as a map-j.i #2); which are both thenlinked to Thursday Island (Textile as a map-t.i #2),
a small island between Australia and Papua New
Guinea where many Japanese immigrants labored in
the pearling industry. A new form of cartography iscreated, not by charts and geographies, but insteadby memory and shared experiences of diasporicexistences connected by oceans.
For these works, Oh employed her own backstrap
weaving method, inspired by traditional Guatemalanbackstrap weaving techniques that she learned
from a teacher she met during her studies at Kyoto
City University of the Arts. Oh painted and dyed
the woven linen threads using black sumi ink andbleach, a process which left layers of color similar toa landscape emerging from the mist. In her weaving
process, Oh considers the interlacing of the threads(warp and weft) to be analogous to the fabric ofspace and time, so that each layer of woven thread
represents the past in the present: “The fabric isflat, but once unraveled, a three-dimensional space
inflated with air emerges. Exploring this space suggests
what exists, what existed, and what can exist between
threads.”5In the repetitive process of backstrap weaving, theartist must use her own body to control the tensionof the warp threads. This method is highly portable,
and as such is a traditional craft that resonates within
migrant communities. The medium itself also
blurs national boundaries—weaving is an ancienttechnique that has been developed by transnational
movement around the world, including between
Japan, Korea, and Australia.

Miyake, Michiyo. “Guano Dream 1890s-1920s” and “Japanese Occupation 1940s” in Spiral History - TIDE. Self-published zine by textus,
Haji Oh and Michiyo Miyake. 2023. pg 7-8, 20-21.
5Oh, Haji. Presentation notes for the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award. November 2023.
4

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Previous versions of Nautical Maps have taken
the form of temporary installations, but the artist
intentionally framed these three new works to makethem portable, bringing these three meaningful
locations around the world.
Seabird Habitatscape #1 - Bunda Lagoon andMother Mountain
Seabird Habitatscape #1 - Bunda Lagoon and Mother
Mountain (2024) is the first of Oh’s new site-specificseries, Seabird Habitatscape (2024-Present). For
this new series, Oh critically disrupts the colonial
vernacular of western cartography, conceptuallyremapping the islands of the Pacific by tracing theextraction of resources that brought migrant laborers
from all over the world to the region. By following
phosphate mining, pearl diving, immigration
detention centers, and military bases as a historicallens, Oh’s research traces the shifting control ofGerman, British, and Antipodean imperialisms thatbrought waves of migrants from China, Malaysia,
and India laboring under western powers, as well as
Korean and Japanese laborers during Japan’s militaryoccupation of the region during World War II. Many
descendants are still based in Oceania, forming an
extensive diasporic community that is renderedinvisible by national histories.
Enticingly beautiful, the intricacy of Oh’s dreamy
textile installation immediately pulls viewers in
to take a closer look at the artist’s labor-intensive
approach—both in craft and research. Juxtaposedwith a faded projection of an archival British map of
the Pacific from 1798, the artist’s interconnected blue
textiles offer atmospheric views of Nauru and Papua
New Guinea’s tropical landscapes, cyanotyped usingfilmic transparencies collaged from archival images
and Oh’s photography. Oh combined cyanotype andhogushigasuri (warp printing ikat) to slowly bring
the landscapes into view using a tactile, meticulous
process that took the artist months to complete. For
the hogushigasuri technique, the artist loosely weaves
the textile in order to print the image onto it, before
unraveling it completely and starting the weaving
process over. The alternating layers of loom weaving
pull the unprinted threads forward to mingle withthe cyanotyped threads, creating an atmosphericeffect that gives the landscape a depth similar towhat is found in painting and photography. Oh
manipulates warp threads during the weaving
process to introduce variable textures, spaces, andgaps, bringing attention to the distinct variations
textile carries as a sculptural form. Over the courseof making the work, the artist applied the cyanotype
emulsion and exposure process four times, the layersof which can be observed at the edges of each panel,
ebbing like the tides of the ocean or silhouette ofmountains. Through this cyanotyping process, theimage progressively comes into sharper focus, justlike the recollection of a memory.
Installed for the first time in the gallery space,
Seabird Habitatscape #1 is held in tension even as it
softly sways. The original linen warp threads activate
the piece from floor to ceiling, extending the viewer’s
gaze to anchoring points and subtle shadows thatserve to narrate a new understanding of history.

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Press Release“I regard weaving and unraveling as ways to evoke the existence of silent memory, introducing my own concepts
and ideas and creating spaces to stimulate people’s imagination.”- Haji Oh, 2023
Alison Bradley Projects is proud to announce Un / Weaving, the debut solo exhibition of Haji Oh in the
United States, curated by Eimi Tagore-Erwin. Oh (b. Osaka, 1976) is a third generation Zainichi Korean artist,born and raised in Japan, now based in Wollongong, Australia. Oh developed her own unique approach tothe medium by incorporating traditional Korean sewing techniques, Japanese kasuri (ikat), hoshigasuri (warp
printing ikat), and Guatemalan backstrap loom weaving. Un / Weaving showcases a selection of 15 artworks
representative of Oh’s oeuvre, surveying the artist’s dynamic experimentations with textile as she has traced
memory and migration through weaving, dyeing, stitching, photography, and cyanotype.
Oh’s extensive body of work gives expression to the inevitable silences that occur amongst diasporiccommunities that don’t easily fit into national histories. Drawing from the Latin word texere, meaning “toweave,” Oh likens the process of creating textiles to composing a text—she weaves threads together to compose
the structural space of memories that have been overlooked and forgotten, opening them up to the present.
Stemming from her grandmother’s migration to Japan from Jeju Island, South Korea, in the 1930s, Oh’s
early works combine portraiture and textile to reimagine the “unknowability” of her ancestral past. Due togenerational distance, significant chapters of her family’s immigration story were lost when her grandmotherpassed away in 2001. Oh learned traditional sewing techniques in South Korea in order to reflect upon her
identity as a Korean in Japan, the unverbalized memories of her grandmother, and unresolved questions
about her inherited past. The artist has since expanded her work to include the voices of overlooked migrantcommunities of the Pacific, mirroring her own transpacific travels. In 2008, she traveled to Canada as avisiting scholar of York University and interned at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto, leading her tocreate mixed media works about the experiences of incarcerated Japanese-Canadian women during WWII,
with immersive sound components in both English and Japanese. Oh moved to Australia in 2014, where
her work gained a more global perspective and she began her ongoing grand-mother island project series,
which traces the inherited and lost stories of migrant labor communities that have crossed the Pacific Ocean.
The exhibition includes three chapters of this project, including the first of Oh’s new site-specific Seabird
Habitatscapes series. Reconceptualizing the landscapes of islands that pepper the Pacific, this new series reflects
on the interconnectedness of resource extraction, imperialism, and migration in a bold culmination of Oh’s
experimentation with media.

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Oh has spent two decades creating works that blur the framework of national boundaries, highlighting
the liminality of transpacific movement and the way that these movements are often erased by history.
Her body of work shifts seamlessly between the personal and global, but throughout, the memory of her
grandmother is deeply influential—as a grounding figure and as a metaphor for inherited pasts.
Alison Bradley Projects is honored to bring Oh’s striking works to a wider audience in New York. In acity brimming with powerful, diasporic stories, Oh’s work gains new meaning. Un / Weaving: Haji Oh
is accompanied by an online catalog authored by Eimi Tagore-Erwin.

Haji Oh is a Zainichi Korean artist from Osaka (b. 1976), living and working in Wollongong, Australia
and Japan. An accomplished international textile and fiber artist, Oh studied Dyeing and Weaving at
the Kyoto City University of the Arts, receiving her MA in 2002 and PhD in 2012. She was recently
awarded the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA) for 2024-2026 and named as a finalist for the
ANTEPRIMA x Center for Heritage Arts and Textile (CHAT) Contemporary Textile Art Prize.
Oh’s recent exhibitions include KANTEN:観展 The Limits of History, apexart, New York 2023;
Roppongi Crossing: Coming & Going, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo 2022-23; TEXTURE, Canberra
Contemporary Art Space 2023; Publicness of the Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Japan 2019-2020;
Memories in Weaving, Oyama City Kurumaya Museum of Art, Japan 2019; Kanazawa: Altering Home,
Neighborhoods in Kanazawa City; and Wearing Memory, University of Wollongong, 2015. She received
the Han Chang-Woo-Tetsu Cultural Foundation Grant in 2011, and has completed artist residencies
at Art Tower Mito and Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Japan; and Bundanon and University of
Wollongong, Australia.

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Weaving Stripes with Haji Oh
Oh has incorporated the idea of “workshops as research” into her artistic practice since 2010, starting with herreading workshop for Another Story (2010). The artist believes that during workshops, a reciprocal relationship iscreated between the artist and the audience, in which the boundary between participant and observer is blurred.
As part of Un / Weaving, the curator organized an artist-led backstrap weaving workshop called Weaving
Stripes with Haji Oh.
The workshop brought together a community of New York-based creatives to the gallery for a rare chance tolearn about the structure of the backstrap weaving loom from the artist herself. Backstrap weaving is a techniquein which weavers must adjust the tension of the warps by using their bodies as they weave. Warps are rolledaround two rods; one is attached to a strap worn around the weaver's waist, and the other is tied to pillars forstability. The stripe pattern created during this workshop is one of the most characteristic patterns of backstrap
weaving due to its structure, which allows for the creation of alternating colors and textures.
During the workshop, participants gained insights into Oh’s labor-intensive practice—the physical rigor requiredof using your own body and the meticulous attention to detail necessary for creating even just a single stripe.

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Photographs by TJ Perrin

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CV
Solo Exhibitions
2019
Memories in Weaving, Kurumaya Museum of Art, Oyama City, Tochigi, Japan2017
The imaginary landscape – grandmother island, MATSUO MEGUMI +Voice Gallery pfs/w, Kyoto,
Japan
2015
Wearing Memory, ver. Wollongong, TAEM Gallery at University of Wollongong, Australia
2014
Wearing Memory, Koganei Art Spot Chateau 2F, Tokyo, Japan2013
OH Haji × Aomori City Archives "Gestures in Clothing," Aomori Contemporary Art Center, 		Aomori, Japan2010
Dwelling of Memory, Shibakawa Building, Osaka, Japan2008
Slipping Through the Texture – The Moment of Silence – From the Journey in the Philippines, 		Voice Gallery pfs/w, Kyoto, Japan
2006
Memory, Voice Gallery pfs/w, Kyoto, Japan
2001
Roots, Voice gallery, Kyoto, Japan
Group Exhibitions
2023
KANTEN 観展: The Limits of History, apexart, New York, USA
Texture, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra, Australia
2022
Roppongi Crossing 2022, Coming & Going, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Nuno no Tsubasa, Somé Seiryukan, Kyoto, Japan
2020
Grandmother’s Life, Tracing the Passage of Memories, Koganei Art Spot Chateau 2F, Japan
2019
Publicness of the Art Center, Art Tower of Mito, Ibaraki, Japan2018
Altering Home: Culture Cities of East Asia 2018: Kanazawa, Kanazawa, Japan2017
Binding Threads / Expanding Threads – The Art of Creating “Between-ness,” Hiroshima City
Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan
Everyday Life – Sigh of Awareness, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 		Ishikawa, Japan2016
Pojagi as a Portrait – with Haji Oh’s Photograph Works, Crafts of Korean Peninsula, Kurumaya
Museum of Art, Oyama City, Japan
2014
Going, Going, Until I Meet the Tide, Busan Biennale, Kiswire Factory, Korea
ex-pots 2011 – 2013, Breaker Project, Enoco and Kioku Shugei-kan Tansu, Osaka, Japan2012
VOCA –Vision of Contemporary Art 2012, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2011
Inner Voices, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan2010
We love books! International Book Art Picnic, Nakanoshima Library, Osaka, Japan
2009
HOME, Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Aomori, Japan
Winter Energy, Lennox Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
2008
HIROSHIMA ART DOCUMENT 2008, The Former Bank of Japan, Hiroshima Branch, AtomBombed Construction, Hiroshima, Japan
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2007
2006
2006
2005
2004
2002

Young Artist Selective Exhibition, The Museum of Kyoto, Kyoto, JapanNIPPON vs. FINE ART – Striving for Identity in the Context of Western Art, Osaka City Museumof Modern Art, Shinsaibashi Temporary Exhibition Space, Osaka, Japan√roots, Ho-nen in Temple, Kyoto, Japan
Zone-Poetic Moment, Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo, Japan
Orientity, Hong Kong Fringe Club, Hong Kong
Orientity, Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto, Japan
Several Situations: Kyoto Style Lab, 02, Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto, Japan

Selected Publications & Exhibition Catalogues
Shim, S., 2021, “Unravelling Place: Oh Haji's Textile Work Nautical Map,” TASSA REVIEW, vol. 30, no.4, pp.
12-14.
Jennison, R., 2020, “Contact Zones and Liminal Spaces in Okinawa and Zainichi Contemporary Art,” Asian
Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA). vol.6, pp. 11-26.
Jennison, R., 2017, “Reimagining Islands: Notes on Selected Works by Oh Haji, Soni Kum, and Yamashiro
Chikako,” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA). 3, 1-2, pp.155-177.
Jennison, R., 2015, “Postmemory" in the Work of Oh Haji and Soni Kum,” in Still Hear the Wound: Toward
an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come. Cornell East Asia Series. pp. 115-133.
Jin, E.-Y. & Shim, Bo Seon., 2015, “The Politics and Aesthetics of the Wound: Performative Narratives of thePeople by Zainichi Korean Artists,” Korea Journal. vol.55, pp. 86-111.
Jennison, R., 2007, “Personal Geographies, Public Space: Contemporary Art on the Borderlines in Japan,”
Journal of Kyoto Seika University. vol 33, 京都精華大学紀要』第33号, pp. 194-217.
AwardsTokyo Contemporary Art Award, 2024 – 2026
ANTEPRIMA x Center for Heritage Arts and Textile, Contemporary Textile Art Prize Finalist, 2024
Han Chang-Woo-Tetsu Cultural Foundation Grant, 2011
Korean Scholarship Foundation, 2007 – 2010
Young Artist Selective Exhibition, The Museum of Kyoto, 2007, Jury Recommendation by Motoaki Shinohara
Residencies
Bundanon, Australia, May 2022
Art Tower Mito, Japan, April – May 2019
University of Wollongong, Australia, June – August 2015
Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Japan, September – December 200941

Artwork References
Another Story
Audio reference: Joy Kogawa. Obasan. Toronto, ON: Penguin, 1983 [1981].
Los Negros Island 1949
Image references: at the upper left: Murray, J. K. (Jack Keith), Sir, 1889-1980 (1949). Aerial view of Lombrum naval
base, Los Negros Island, Papua New Guinea, Sep 1949. Jack Keith Murray Collection, UQFL91, Album 2, item 93.
Image reference at the upper right: Murray, J. K. (Jack Keith), Sir, 1889-1980 (1949). Aerial view of Lombrum naval
base, Los Negros Island, Papua New Guinea, Sep 1949. Jack Keith Murray Collection, UQFL91, Album 2, item 88.
Image reference at the lower left: Murray, J. K. (Jack Keith), Sir, 1889-1980 (1949). Aerial view of Lombrum naval
base, Los Negros Island, Papua New Guinea, Sep 1949. Jack Keith Murray Collection, UQFL91, Album 2, item 90.
Image reference at the lower right: Murray, J. K. (Jack Keith), Sir, 1889-1980 (1949). Aerial view of Lombrum naval
base, Los Negros Island, Papua New Guinea, Sep 1949. Jack Keith Murray Collection, UQFL91, Album 2, item 91.
Phosphate fields
Image reference: 193-?, Phosphate workings - a worked out field, National Library of Australia, nla.obj143785169
Aerial photography, Momote
Image reference: 1966, Momote Qasco Air Surveys, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-649176776
Phosphate fields in Banaba Island
Image reference: 192-?, Phosphate fields, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-139542001
Landscape of Lagoon in Nauru
Image reference: 193-?, One of Nauru's beauty spots - a corner of the Buada Lagoon, National Library of Australia,
nla.obj-143784867
Mother Mountain
Image reference: Blanche Bay and Rabaul township with Mother Mountain, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, approximately 191-?, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-152972214
Road in PNG and railway tracks in Christmas Island
Image reference at the left: Road around Blanche Bay, Rabaul, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea,
approximately 1916, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-152967114
Image references at the right: National Library of Australia, nla.obj-152967114 and nla.obj-2442073609

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Artwork References
Seabird Habitatscape #1 - Bunda Lagoon and Mother Mountain
Image reference at the left: 193-?, One of Nauru's beauty spots - a corner of the Buada Lagoon, National Library ofAustralia, nla.obj-143784867
Image reference at the right: Approximately 1916, Mother Mountain, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea,
National Library of Australia, nla.obj-152966813
Projection reference: Chart of the Pacific Ocean, 1798, by Aaron Arrowsmith, The Collection of the State Libraryof NSW

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All writings by Eimi Tagore-Erwin
Edited by Sofia Thieu D'Amico
Designed by Cayla Blachman
Special acknowledgement to Sei Smith, Takuya Ikezaki,
Mischa Kuma, and Sydney Lee

Courtesy of Alison Bradley Projects
Copyright of Alison Bradley Projects
526 W. 26th Street, Suite 814
New York, NY 10001
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