Biography
Maari Sugawara is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer. Her arts-based research engages with the intersection of Japanese Studies, Gender Studies, and Digital Media. As a queer, autistic Japanese woman who grew up in the UK and later immigrated to Canada and is now based in Hong Kong, issues of marginalized identities and displacement are central to her current work. This displacement prompts her to review the nuances of selves and identities; in particular, post-WWII Japanese “self-colonizing” cultural and national identity. Queer methodology and speculative fiction narratives support her as she engages in uncovering both historical and personal herstories and orientations that have been forgotten—destroyed or hidden—to reorient national and cultural memory away from heteronormativity within Japanese societies. This theoretical research intertwines with her artistic activity that is a mode of knowledge production inseparable from artistic practice. Incorporating XR (VR, AR), animation, photography, videography, texts, and sound that are narratively linked, her projects examine the interconnections between global and personal herstories, Imperial past and futures, desire and violence while investing the power heteronormativity and coloniality holds.
