Artist Interview:
June Sekiguchi
How did COVID-19 change, influence, or impact your work for this project?
The shelter in place order provided prime opportunity to hunker down in the studio and be free of distractions, as well as to give a sense of purpose while navigating the global emotional unsteadiness on a scale of what we have never experienced before.
COVID-19 had a direct impact on one piece in an obvious way. One of my themes was “Fight and Treat Disease” and having just traveled to Cambodia and Laos before signing on to the project I was going to address malaria. Then the novel coronavirus hit and it made perfect sense to me to make a sculptural virus in wood. It was a welcomed challenge to work out the three-dimensional forms, attachments, colors, and symbols. I had to work in ways I haven’t done before. My favorite part is the blue squiggle line that represents the chaos that we were all operating under having no firm idea of how to handle the situation. The magenta outer ring along the circumference of the piece is cut in a chain-link pattern representing how interconnected the world is in a global economy and supply chains. The spread of the virus was so fast because of our global interconnectedness.
While the coronavirus piece is a direct interpretation of a microscopic form, I generally work metaphorically in my studio practice and the second piece I made for the project fell into that working realm. In the piece Flourish, I used a flower form to metaphorically represent the theme of “Survive and Thrive” (through education and health). The flower form precedes the fruit representing nutrition and health. It is also based on the hexagon which represents education. It is the most complicated piece I’ve made on a small scale with numerous parts that had to line up with pegs, notches, and skewers to make the piece connect. I relied on the geometry of the hexagon to make it work.
Image courtesy of the artist
What is inspiring you and your artistic practice at this moment?
Relatively speaking, visual artists are fairing better than live performing artists in music, dance, theater where we can work in our studios in solitude and keep creating. I am lucky enough to have projects in place as well as other opportunities that have come in the time of the pandemic keeping me busier than ever. The Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, increased racist acts blaming Asians for the coronavirus are all fuel to work towards a better future and naturally enter the percolating of ideas in my studio practice.
Out of the four themes key to the foundation’s work, is there a theme that resonates the most with you and your art?
When approached for the project there was no pandemic, no shut down. I felt I could produce two pieces in the timeframe before the mid-April deadline. I chose “Fight and Treat Disease” and “Survive and Thrive” because I immediately envisioned possibilities for those themes. However, because I do like to respond to prompts and I work to find metaphors to convey an idea, I would have loved to respond to all the themes and the shelter in place order pushing the deadline back would have given me the time to produce four works. Because I am a mother to three children, I think “Survive and Thrive” resonated with me the most. The foundation’s focus on education and health as the means to ensure that children and young people survive and thrive is ripe with ways to convey the theme that interested me.
What do you hope people experience in viewing your artwork?
My hope for my art is that it makes someone pause and to consider the work, to think about construction and meaning, to think about what is creative energy. I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of the Gates Foundation's celebration of 20 years of philanthropic work.
