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Doors 6pm / Performance 7pm
Free admission

In connection with Aine Nakamura’s exhibition and research project hands on tape, she performs a duo with longtime collaborator koto player Kanoko Nishi-Smith, and a collaborative project with violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon. The gallery will be open for viewing one hour before the performance.

Duo with Hyuyung Sol Yoon

Whenever the subject of the Korean War comes up in a family conversation, my grandmother's face contorts with agony and she begins with the words, "we suffered so much..." She communicates as though the war had just took place instead of more than half a century ago. After reading the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk on how trauma transforms our bodies and minds, I understood that my grandmother was feeling the trauma of the war like it was taking place currently. 

I'm a firm believer of the term "interbeing" as taught by Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn. There is no separation between what my ancestors have experienced and what I'm experiencing, I'm a continuation of them, we are interconnected. When Aine asked me to be a part of this project, I brought up the practice of breathing as a tool, like a bandage, to protect and heal ourselves. We'll be breathing, with ourselves, with each other, and with our ancestors. We invite you to breathe also.

—Hyeyung Sol Yoon

Last year, my friend Rachel Chen’s mother Deborah Chen changed my stand point about intergenerational stories related to war from 'responsibility' to 'love'. I had visited Singapore, and Deborah and I have been continuing our communication. After visiting Korea, in face of crimes made, I felt love may be the only approach we can take. With the topic of war and violence, and mending, I am going back to trying to find my starting point all the time.

With Hyeyung, in our breathing together, I am in the love. Hyeyung and I went to see a talk about writing about otherness the other day too. I am learning that otherness including close ones and inner is not necessarily at a distance but maybe near what I open up to.

—Aine Nakamura

Hyeyung Sol Yoon (she/her) is an artist at the margins of her American and Korean identities who plays the violin, composes, teaches, and organizes arts communities in a career that spans over 2 decades. Hyeyung’s experience of immigrating to the U.S. from Korea at the age of 7 and later traveling to her motherland to experience Korea’s shaman rituals and folk performances continue to inspire and inform her own creative work. She joined the Del Sol Quartet in April 2023, an ensemble that has commissioned or premiered thousands of works by composers since 1992. Hyeyung was a violinist in the Chiara String Quartet for 18 years before celebrating the ensemble’s last season in 2018.

Duo with Kanoko Nishi-Smith

Since the two artists met in the Bay Area, they quickly found a shared mission in channeling, processing, and understanding the complexity and contradictions observed in human nature. The conversations have been ongoing for a year about childhood, present, ethnicity, relationship, war, and urgency.

The cosmic scars are open to the extent we can't ignore. Despite the discomfort and opacity, the scars provide an opening for looking, listening, touching, sensing and moving with what may be beneath the physical boundaries. The duo will attempt to listen, not out of curiosity, nor to injure, but to love and hold what is revealed, developing from the unknown.

Kanoko Nishi-Smith is a performer currently based in SF/Bay Area. Though classically trained on piano, receiving a BA in Classical Music Performance from Mills College, her recent interest has primarily been in performing 20th century and contemporary musical compositions for piano as well as for koto (Japanese 13-string zither), and free-improvisation in various different contexts, with musicians, as well as dancers, poets, and visual artists.