From Here to Sunday presents
Erin Shigaki + Hi Bye
naninani 何何
November 23 - December 24
Opening Reception: November 23, 2-5pm
SHOP THE COLLECTION
Hi Bye and Erin Shigaki first met while taking graphic design classes at American University in Washington, D.C. Over their more than thirty years of friendship, they have explored art, music, and ideas — particularly during the time they spent as neighbors in Brooklyn.
Now living on opposite coasts, they have each turned to hand-built ceramics as an antidote to digital burnout.
Hi Bye’s art focuses on imagination, humor, and world-building through an ongoing “hidden in plain sight” series of ceramic street art tiles. Erin’s multi-disciplinary work is concerned with grace and cultural reclamation, and incorporates Shinto and other reframed Japanese motifs.
naninani 何何 — loosely “what is this?” in Japanese — represents a melding of Hi Bye and Erin’s brainscapes in ceramics, paper, and paint. It’s a world where joy, shared experiences, friendship, and the various creatures that inhabit their imaginations live. They invite you to come see what’s inside.
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Erin Shigaki (she/they) is a yonsei (fourth-generation) Japanese-American artist, activist, and storykeeper. She creates work that is community-based and often grounded in the World War II incarceration of her people. She is passionate about highlighting similarities between that history and systemic injustices communities of color continue to face.
Erin’s community work includes work on the annual Minidoka Pilgrimage to the American concentration camp where her family was incarcerated; with Tsuru for Solidarity, a nonviolent, abolitionist project of social justice advocates; and for Look Listen + Learn, a television show that inspires radical Black joy and advances early learning in young children of color.
She is the recipient of grants and commissions from the National Academy of Design, the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Wing Luke Museum, Densho, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and ArtsWA, among others.
She holds a B.A. from Yale University and believes that wielding art and activism can educate, redress, and incrementally heal.
Instagram: @purplegat3
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Hi Bye (she/her) has resided in Brooklyn since 2000, and living along the Gowanus has provided both a canvas and inspiration for her works in naninani 何何. Her ceramic street art tile series is an ever-expanding work in progress superimposing an imaginary universe of her own creation over the existing reality of New York City. The tiles, hidden in plain sight throughout the city, are a way to share small, unexpected moments of humor and delight with her fellow New Yorkers.
As a child, her family operated a small wooden toy store and woodworking shop, and she considers the playfulness she brings to her work a continuation and expression of her family’s legacy of creating carefully constructed, hand-crafted joys.
She is a member of the Powerhouse Arts Community Ceramics Studio, and will be featured in an upcoming issue of Kazoo magazine.
Instagram: @hibyetiles