<\/p>\n
As a foreign visitor partaking in the communial experience of living
\nin the Compeung Residency, my exposure to Thai culture was neither
\nthat of\u00a0 a tourist nor resident, but as something of an outsider who
\nwas allowed to share in their lives, space and time.<\/p>\n
\u53e4\u4eca\u6771\u897f-Kokon Touzai<\/em>\u00a0is created from this experience of having the Tomo Kobayashi was born in Tokyo, Japan. After earning a double major\u00a0BFA in Ceramics and Photography at Arizona State University in 2007,\u00a0 she moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. While there she became an\u00a0associate artist at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art until\u00a02009. She was accepted into the masters program at Michigan State University and is currently a third year MFA candidate.<\/p>\n Her work seeks to focus upon the broader aspects of cross\/inter-cultural experiences that may express the idea of Kizuna, a Japanese term meaning a strong physical and psychological bond between people.<\/p>\n Her most recent work “A Story of My Aunt”<\/em> is a\u00a0commemorative piece taken from her living experience with her aunt,\u00a0Teruko, for six months before Teruko’s death from breast cancer. Short\u00a0poems were etched onto rice paper, which was then torn into strips and\u00a0woven together to form a cloth that expresses a sadly quiet and\u00a0 somehow beautiful memento of that time spent together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kokon Touzai (\u53e4\u4eca\u6771\u897f) As a foreign visitor partaking in the communial experience of living in the Compeung Residency, my exposure to Thai culture was neither that of\u00a0 a tourist … explore this artist(s)Tomo Kobayashi<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[83,79],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sculpture-installation","tag-japan","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5730,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions\/5730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/compeung.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nviewpoint of being the outsider. It is a Japanese idiom meaning
\nliterally old, new, west and east.\u00a0\u53e4\u4eca-Kokon<\/em>\u00a0refers to any flow of time
\nand\u00a0\u6771\u897f-Touzai<\/em>\u00a0refers to any span of space. Vibrant Buddhist temples,
\nlocal markets, rice fields and wai seem to coexist with western style
\nhouses, huge trucks and iPads. I felt as if I was witness to the
\nmerging of both old and new cultures and traditions.<\/p>\n
\n