I Am a Living Object is a short film created during my 2024 artist residency with the La Trobe Art Institute and filmed at Bendigo Art Gallery. The work emerged from my encounter with the history of Ainu ancestral remains that had been taken from Japan and held in an Australian institution for decades before being repatriated to Japan in 2023.

I began to imagine the experience of my ancestors—held in museum storage, separated from their land, their people, and the ground for which they were meant. What does it mean to be kept as an object when you were once a living person?

In the film, I enter this history through my own body. I imagine myself as a living object—an ancestor returning from a place of confinement and searching for somewhere to stand, move, breathe, and live again. Through movement and visual storytelling, I challenge the historical separation between the human being and the museum object, between the dead and the living.

For me, becoming a “living object” is also a way of reclaiming what was lost. I search for a space that is not defined by the museum, the archive, or the history that confined my ancestors, but by the freedom to live, remember, and create my own future.

The film asks not only where our ancestors belong after repatriation, but also how we, as living descendants, reclaim the space and possibilities that were taken from us.

I Am a Living Object
2024 · Short film, 8 min
La Trobe Art Institute Artist Residency
Filmed at Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia
Cinematography: Justin Balmain