nakushita • trouvé
A mixed media body of work investigating translations of what can be found through what has been lost. As noted in further detail below, a handful of works were made collaboratively or in response to collected writing about loss from individuals whom Manon identified as helping her find something significant.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: an inherited suitcase dissected in halves, seaweed wallpaper, vinyl, thumbtacks, two-channel video on monitors
Dimensions: 6’L x 7’H x 3’W
Description: This version of digestion (2025) reconfigured the arrangement of the installation with the suitcase halves facing each other and an addition of seaweed wallpaper. It was exhibited on the East Coast at Grace Exhibition Space in New York City as part of Pixelmouth’s residency at the same time as digestion (2024) was up on the West Coast at Edge on the Square in San Francisco.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: inherited suitcase dissected into halves, take-out sushi grass, two-channel video on monitors
Dimensions: 7’L x 6’H x 5’W
Description: This work was commissioned by Edge on the Square in San Francisco and is a reincarnation of digestion (2020) with an addition of video vignettes shot in 2024 as channel two, which mirror the original vignettes shot in 2020. In this window installation, one half of the suitcase with channel two was hung from the ceiling facing out to the street and the other half with channel one on an interior gallery wall facing in.
Photos: Install shots by Nordlys Photography, all others by Manon Wada
Artists: Manon Wada with Sanié Bokhari
Materials: medicine cabinet, transparency prints, gaffers tape, hardware, vinyl text, glass containers, rose buds, indigo leaves, graph paper, drywall screws, red rope, sand, mirror, matches, air, wax, graphite
Dimensions: 12″H x 12″L x 5″W
Description: Art Rx was made in 2024 for A Place of Her Own Exhibition at J-Sei Cultural Center in Emeryville, CA. This sculpture set inside an altered medicine cabinet is filled with containers holding materials commonly used in their art practices. Each is labeled with symbolic remedies that would be abundant in a place of their own. Art Rx is an object to turn to for safety and for the assurance that it always contains what one needs.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: the suitcase my father immigrated to the United States with, inherited tools wrapped in fabric
Dimensions: 1/2 suitcase: 19″L x 28″H x 7″W, 2/2 suitcase: 19″L x 33″H x 7″W
Description: Meiyo is an edition of two and reincarnates the dissected suitcase of a previous piece entitled digestion (2020) into new sculptures that are meant to honor her father’s life and work. The suitcase halves were exhibited simultaneously in two exhibitions in 2023 at The Emily Harvey Foundation in NYC and at HUB-Robeson Galleries at Penn State University.
Artists: Ong Siraphisut and Manon Wada, installed by U Bat Sat and Sasiwimon Wongjarin
Materials: Mylar emergency blankets, tape, translucent text
Locations: Weave Artisan Society and Studio 88 Artist Residency in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Description: Artists Ong Siraphisut and Manon Wada collaborated on luminous installations using Mylar emergency blankets to call attention to the air quality crisis in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for the 2023 Art for Air festival. These site-responsive installations offered temporary relief from hot weather and were impacted by wind onsite, making air visible. The audience was invited to reflect within the work by breathing deeply and connecting to their own body of air. The interplay with the environment considered the influence of human activities on air and in turn, how we are affected. Translucent text appeared on the Mylar mirroring a ghostly presence of air.
Photos by: Sasiwimon Wongjarin and U Bat Sat
Artists: Reiko Fujii, Irene Wibawa, Maggie Yee, Sanié Bokhari and Manon Wada, Manon Wada
Description: memoir (2023) is an experimental short film about family remembrance, which was all self-recorded on phones and laptops by a group of Asian American Women artists primarily located in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. It was screened at Filmshop House on Governors Island in 2024. The list of artist names above correlate with the order of video stills featured.
Video edited by: Manon Wada
Artists: Sanié Bokhari and Manon Wada
Materials: medicine cabinet, plexiglass, drawing on wood, acrylic mirror, vinyl text, graphite, glitter, shellac, lace, print on transparency, two-channel video on ipads
Dimensions: 15″L x 20″H x 6″W
Description: Artist collaborators Sanié Bokhari and Manon Wada reflect back on pandemic experiences of isolation, illness, and loss. Their two-channel video sculpture cabin fever, fever dream is set inside a medicine cabinet and divulges a series of hallucinatory vignettes mediated through experimental zoom recordings. This work was exhibited at Border Project Space in Brooklyn, NY.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: collection of found frames with etched glass, wooden dowels, monofilament
Dimensions: 5’3″L x 9’H x 6’4″W
Description: a pause held space as a momentary altar for collective mourning and acknowledging the immense amount of loss in 2020 and ongoing. It was installed inside a walk-in closet at Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield, MA, for Rites of Passage Project 2021.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: the suitcase that my father immigrated to the United States with, fabric screen, one-channel video projection
Dimensions: 4’L x 5’3″H x 3’W
Description: A dissected suitcase houses a projector in one side and projects onto a screen on the other side. The video vignettes include a number of actions processing and reanimating inherited materials from Manon’s father, such as the tracing/erasing of a letter and the configuration of a lost home floor plan constructed from molding.
Artists: Manon Wada, video featuring Irene Wibawa
Materials: repurposed chairs, table, molding, miscellaneous found wood, hardware, joint compound, paint, glass cup, sugar, salt, single-channel video projection
Dimensions: 8’6″L x 6’6″H x 3’6″W
Description: Invited participant Irene Wibawa responded to writing prompts on loss and identified losing time gradually. A video featuring artists Wibawa and Wada reading their responses back and forth is projected above a sculptural installation, which has snippets of the narrative carved into it with reversed text.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: 26 sets of lower case and 26 sets of capital magnet alphabet letters cast in hydrocal and graphite, paper and wood glue origami boats, corner of wall, cast iron origami shuriken
Dimensions: 5’L x 4’H x 4’W
Description: Invited participant and artist Maggie Yee responded to written prompts on loss and identified losing her childhood due to significant events. This work was made in response to the submitted writing and is comprised of ingredients intended to serve as a first aid kit. It was installed sequentially in two different locations.
Artist: Manon Wada, video featuring Reiko Fujii
Materials: lightcatchers, dissected couch, halved and full book shelves, sheetrock screen, single-channel video projection
Dimensions: 10’L x 8’H x 5’W
Description: Invited participant and artist Reiko Fujii responded to writing prompts on loss and identified losing ‘a lightness of being’ when Trump was elected. The composite images feature video stills from the installation, which responded to her writing and attempted to find what was lost.
Artist: Manon Wada
Materials: cast iron picture frame, partial desk drawer, denatured alcohol lamp, silver and copper casting grain, half of a table, chair in halves, wall, headphones, audio recording
Dimensions: 5’L x 4’H x 2’W
Description: Invited artist and participant Suzanne Pugh responded to written prompts on loss and identified losing a sense of belonging when a family member passed away. This installation response attempted to serve as an anchor and was accompanied by an audio recording– an overlay of singing middle c from memory eight days in a row.
Artists: Reiko Fujii, Cynthia Tom, Manon Wada, and Maggie Yee
Materials: Found dollhouse, jars, personal photo archives, led lights, tree branches, fabricated floating houses, paper, pens
Dimensions: 7’L x 7’H x 3’W
Description: Wandering Home was created collaboratively by Reiko Fujii, Cynthia Tom, Manon Wada, and Maggie Yee. The intention of this work was to create an open space to pay homage to personal hungry ghosts that one wishes to release. From 2017–19, this traveling installation collected over 300 handwritten notes from the public to their self-identified hungry ghosts. Due to the personal nature of the writing, the contents have been kept private. Collaborators of the project acknowledged the notes and then released them via burning at Muir Beach in California.
Photos by: Reiko Fujii