Powerful Sonic Memorial Honors WWII Dead Through Immersive Installation
Los Angeles-based artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork has created a profound sonic memorial that bridges two traumatic spaces from World War II: the Japanese internment camps of California and the caves of Okinawa used as bunkers during the Pacific conflict. Her exhibition Gama 1213-B at Canary Test represents a deeply personal exploration of silenced histories and inherited trauma.
Family History Informs Artistic Vision
The installation draws from Kiyomi Gork's own family history, particularly the parallel experiences of her great-uncle who served as a U.S. soldier in Okinawa while his family was incarcerated at Tule Lake internment camp in northern California. "The camps are something difficult to address because there's been so much silence and shame around them," Kiyomi Gork explains. "I grew up with an inherited shame around being Japanese."
This silence began to break when Donald Trump's administration expanded immigrant detention centers, prompting family conversations about their eerie similarity to the WWII internment camps. The subsequent outbreak of war in Gaza further compelled the artist to address historical trauma through her work. "I needed to make work about what was happening," she says. "And for me the way I could do that was through my family and their relationship to history."
Okinawa Caves: From Refuge to Tragedy
During the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, local Uchinanchu people used natural caves as bunkers for protection. However, these spaces also became sites of mass suicide due to Japanese propaganda that warned of violent fates at American hands. Kiyomi Gork's great-uncle, one of few Japanese-speaking U.S. soldiers, worked to ensure safe passage for those hiding in the caves.
Visiting these caves personally, Kiyomi Gork experienced their acoustic properties firsthand. "People generally like the sound of water," she remarks, "but in the caves, the water sounded menacing and unnerving." This observation led her to consider how historical knowledge transforms our perception of seemingly neutral spaces.
Technical Innovation Meets Historical Research
The exhibition represents a departure from Kiyomi Gork's previous work exploring how movement creates sound. "It's less of a choreography in the space and more of letting the sound happen around you," she explains. The title combines the Uchinaaguchi word for cave (gama) with her grandfather's barrack number at Tule Lake (1213-B).
The installation features two primary components:
- Ceramic tiles created from clay sourced from Okinawa caves, molded from 3D scans of cave surfaces and arranged in gridded metal screens that mimic the caves' sound-deadening properties
- An ambisonic sound piece that processes recordings from the Tule Lake site through a virtual barrack simulation, recreating what internees might have heard
Honoring Silence and the Unknown
"I've gone through a lot of video footage about the camps," Kiyomi Gork says. "But no one really talks about how it felt or how it sounded." Both her sound piece and sculpture exist in a liminal space between documented structures and imagined experiences.
The artist describes this exploration of her Japanese-American and Uchinanchu roots as "more about the unknown than anything." She explains: "About being OK with not knowing. Or being OK with the fact that there is this huge silence, and honoring that."
A Time-Based Memorial Experience
Kiyomi Gork emphasizes that connection with these unknown histories requires time and presence. "This is a time-based work, so it's through spending time with it, almost like a meditation, that one can sit with and acknowledge what happened."
The exhibition serves as both a sonic memorial to individuals on both sides of the Pacific and an invitation to sit with difficult histories that have been silenced for decades. Gama 1213-B runs from February 12 to March 20 at Canary Test in downtown Los Angeles, offering visitors an immersive experience that bridges personal family history with broader historical trauma.
