Resting on the west coast of Taketomi, an island on the Yaeyama Archipelago in Southern Okinawa, stands a rock. Surrounded by the movement of the tides of the sea, this rock, named Niran, is unlike other rocks. It stands out from the sea, upright, as if a sculpture on a pedestal of petrified coral. Its magnifying appeal comes from being a sacred rock and upon closer examination, one will find that it plays a central role in the spiritual ceremonies conducted by female shamans on the island.

Tucked away on the outmost Southern borders of Japan, the Yaeyama Islands are known to house matriarchal communities. Sacred rocks, such as Niran, may be found scattered over the islands forming a spiritual topography of the islands. Both mysterious and captivating, these sacred rocks are the center of gravitation for a belief-system which is a hybrid of Shintoism, Buddhism and Chinese and Micronesian mythologies. The communities of these islands are often headed by female spiritual leaders, shamans, who act as mediums between nature and the human world; sacred rocks being objects, containers, in which spirits can reside, and through shamanic rituals can interact with humans.

Since 2016, artist Melvin Moti has been returning to the Yaeyama Islands to photograph and document these rocks, as a part of an ongoing research in the use of rocks on the borderline between raw nature and man-made landscapes. Over 30.000 photographs have been assembled for Moti’s latest film, Interwoven, featuring Niran and other sacred rocks on several Yaeyama Islands. The stories, oral histories and mythologies surrounding these rocks point to the human nature of storytelling as a way to form a cultural identity.

A second important component of the shamanic spiritual practice on the Yaeyama Islands is the act of weaving fabrics. By the use of an elaborate process – obtaining thread from fibers of banana trees, extracting dyes from local plants and utilizing the complex technique of double-ikat weaving, each piece of fabric takes several years to complete. The fabrics are worn by shamans during their rituals, reflecting the close relationship and interaction between these mediums and the natural world. Each piece of woven textile, assembled from small portions of nature, is in fact a long meditation on time. Accompanying the film, a new series of handwoven fabrics from the Yaeyama Islands will be presented. They are considered by the artist as a time-based medium.

A self-published artist book, containing notes, photographs and research, will be made available during the exhibition. Due to the current pandemic situation, the film Interwoven is not part of the exhibition.

Melvin Moti