Pour Your Body Out (2023)
Material: powder milk, water, steel, silicone, pumps, etc.
Maya Erin Masuda is an artist who lives and works between both British and Japanese cultures. Having British grandfather and aunts and uncles, Maya first visited the UK when she was evacuated to their house to secure her safety in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant explosion.
In this work, Maya, who has spent a year researching genetic mutations and skin abnormalities of animals left behind in Chernobyl and Fukushima, juxtaposes the traces of geo-trauma inflicted on the ecological community with the catastrophe and anxiety she exoerienced in her own childhood to reconstruct the reality of the event via her own personal experience. How did the negative legacy of technology transformed our perceptions of gravity, time and distance? What does the contradiction between Japanese nationalist values that on the one hand attempt to oppress queer communities, control the population and promote nuclear energy, while at the same time ignores the impact of nuclear energy on animal reproductive capacity, mean for her as a queer/new-media artist?
The circulation of milky fluids, and the fragments of reconfigured body(ies) of humans, animals and the earth pose questions concerning post-humanism, post-intimacy, be-lengthening, pain and queerness in the foreseeable future.
