Exhibits

The Seamstress Exhibit is a first series of Gender and Women Series Exhibit showcased in March 2019, which was a mini exhibit within the main exhibit, Sketches of Teruya. The Seamstress Exhibit profiled five women worked as seamstresses during the occupation era. The idea of the exhibit started with the daily conversations I had with the woman who worked next door, making tempura and Okinawan traditional bento boxes based on the lunar calendar. One day, she informed me that she used to sew at home because her husband did not want her working while raising children, but did promise after the last child gets into grade school, she could work. She waited patiently while doing work at home sewing for various company orders, one of which was to make Rika-chan doll clothes, mainly sewing buttons and hooks for the dress. Intrigued by her story, I started to ask questions to neighbors who are women about the kind of work they had done. Surprisingly, almost everyone has done some type of sewing and I was introduced to the owner who owned the most well-known sewing shop in Teruya, which led to series of interviews of the woman who still lives in Teruya. Read her memoir, which she wrote for her children and grandchildren, I took notes of her experiences owning the tailor shop in Teruya that serviced mainly the black men who bought clothes, especially one-piece tailormade dresses that she and her staff made for their American or Okinawan wives or girlfriends. Like many, the shop made huge profit not only while the soldiers were still stationed on Okinawa, but also when they left through the mail. There are five women profiled in the exhibit with various experiences that differ in their trajectory, but somewhere cross into each other’s stories in creating a highway-like feel of how the stories, the women, and the items (dresses) travel and circle the Trans-Pacific ocean from Okinawa to America and back-and-forth. For example, the photo of four one-piece dresses as part of the exhibit was the actual dresses that an Okinawan woman who now lives in the States owns as part of her collection of Okinawan goods. The tag in the back of the dresses is hand-sewn the name Alice Tailor-made in Koza, matching the name of the shop found the map, but written in Japanese. These dresses, tailored made in Okinawa by Okinawan women for American soldiers who took to the States and subsequently, the wearers sold or gave away the clothes that now circulate through a unique market that may travel back to Okinawa. History could be mapped not only through people, but also objects. The significance of this story is not in finding the location but in the circulation of these and other items that travel across the world, especially between the US and Okinawa through another economy of recycled and vintage market.

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