Presented by Mizuma Gallery

The work Utsusu captures everyday scenes of the artist’s home and backyard in Houston, using many frames of still images in sequence to show a survey of daily encounters. This work also investigates on the idea of reincarnation, in which the artist symbolically captures the scenes as part of the cycle of life and death. Having made the decision to move to the United States after an illustrious art career in Vietnam, Nguyen-Hatsushiba now relives his late father’s legacy as an immigrant and an American parent, embodying his father in a transcendent state of past-life.

The artist says that the title of the film Utsusu which is a Japanese word, has various meanings such as to photograph, to duplicate, to transfer, and to project, which has a transient aspect that he wanted to portray in this piece. The film includes background music which was written and played by the artist in the past and reutilised for this work, as well as incorporating scenes with contemporary dancers Masaru Kakio and Yukichi Matsumoto (the late director of the Osaka-based theatre company Ishinha) who were closely involved in past collaboration project with him.