Site-specific installation by AKIKO ICHIKAWA

Since July 2018, Akiko Ichikawa has kept all of the unrecyclable, nonbiodegradable stuff necessary to maintain an existence and art practice in New York City. Sometimes They Listen is composed of the accumulation of packaging and debris that encases the food, art, beauty, and other products, paired with more than 580 letters composed by Ichikawa and mailed to manufacturers, distributors, and store owners in the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Ichikawa’s campaign asking for the replacement of unnecessary packaging, oftentimes giving concrete suggestions, is a performance via correspondence. She uses the platform of art as activism to shed light on the deadly, continual accumulations of plastic in all five subtropical ocean gyres in the world—in the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean.

Sometimes They Listen first began at mh PROJECT gallery in New York in October 2018 as an installation followed by a performative reading of responses to Ichikawa’s letters. In this second iteration, Ichikawa has added more than 40 written responses and numerous emails from businesses since her first performance in downtown New York City. By incorporating communications about the nonbiodegradable trash from her own life into a visual art installation and performance, Ichikawa has created a form of humorous self-portraiture. Sometimes They Listen (Mobility) continues a sometimes effective, sometimes futile parsing of consumer culture and the roles multibillion dollar manufacturing companies play in our daily personal lives. 

Sometimes They Listen (Mobility) is part of the Independent Projects Program at Alabama Contemporary. Transdisciplinary artist Akiko Ichikawa lives and works in Brooklyn. A graduate of Brown University’s B.A. program in Visual Art with honors and Hunter College’s MFA program in Studio Art, she has received grants from the Rauschenberg Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Queens Theatre, the Indie Theater Fund, Leimay, the Public Art Fund, and Artists Space.  Ichikawa has presented at Performa, Socrates Sculpture Park, Abrons Arts Center, Andrew Kreps Gallery (all in New York), Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale in South Korea, and in Newark, Washington D.C., and Martinique.

OPENING DURING OCTOBER ARTWALK

October 14 @ 6 PM

Generous funding for this exhibition and related programming is provided by: