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06 | In Memory Of A Pond

Sculpture | Hannah Tamiko Mackey | East Lansing, MI

About This Installation

"In Memory of a Pond” is a tiled ceramic sculpture by interdisciplinary artist Hannah Tamiko Mackey. Relief details on the surface of the work mimic the curves and ripples of waves, while drawing further inspiration from roof tiles and adornments on traditional Japanese houses.

Through this work, the artist reflects on memories from her great-grandparents’ home in Waipahu, Hawaii, and uses the repeated unit of tile to map how those memories have changed over time. The result is a kind of visual cipher – a coded narration that circles towards but never quite reaches its center.

This sculpture is also a continuation of the artist’s exploration into tile, and the expression of multiracial identity. By creating monuments to memories and locations from her childhood in Hawaii, the artist adds to a growing number of cultural artifacts significant to the mixed experience.

The artist welcomes you to sit (but not stand) on the sculpture.

Artist Bio

Hannah Tamiko Mackey is an interdisciplinary artist currently residing in East Lansing, Michigan. Her studio work spans graphic design, illustration, and ceramics, and centers on the anthropological examination of a fictional human-fish hybrid species. Through this body of work, she manifests cultural remnants of the hybrid, exploring multiethnic, multicultural, and colonial relationships through interspecies encounters and primitivist assumptions of the other. With each new piece, she progresses the visual language of the hybrid, exposing legacies of scientific racism, the politicization of multiculturalism, and the complicity of mixed subjects.

Hannah is currently a third-year MFA candidate at Michigan State University and holds a BS in Fiber Science from Cornell University. Since beginning her master's, she has been a recipient of the Dissertation Completion Fellowship (DCF), the Special College Research Abroad Monies (SCRAM), summer fellowships within the art department, the Research/Professional Development Travel Fellowship, the MSU Museum Summer Professional Internship, and the Residential College of Arts and Humanities Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship. She served on the Graduate Committee and Foundations Ad Hoc Committee and has taught as an instructor-of-record for foundational studio and graphic design courses at MSU.