Chisato and the poetry of sign language
For Sign Language Week 2025, I’m releasing a new artwork in collaboration with Chisato Minamimura - one of our leading sign language performance artists.
This is part of my evolving photographic practice to capture sign language in all its grace and fluidity, power and expressiveness.
In the face, arms, hands, posture of Chisato Minamimura we see inner and outer landscapes, subtle shades of emotion that lie beyond words.
These photographs draw from her performance at the British Museum of Sumida River in Sign Language. inspired by a 15th Japanese Noh play about a mother who loses her son – and travels to the edge of a turbulent river to seek it, only to be met by a ghost.
It’s a spell-binding performance as Chisato blends visual vernacular, contemporary dance, Japanese and British Sign Language, to evoke rage and tenderness, horror and beauty, darkness and light, movement and stillness.
“I grew up in Tokyo, so my first language is spoken Japanese. Sign Language was banned at most Japanese Deaf schools and so their education was held back. My parents were aware of this and took me to hearing school where I was taught orally and was kept in ignorance of sign language. Many of my Japanese deaf friends had similar experiences. So, every Saturday, we’d come together and devise our own theatre shows.”
“When I later went to Joshibi University of Art and Design to study Japanese painting, I saw other deaf people signing for the first time. I was attracted to learn Sign Language and I found that where previously it was stressful to be lip-reading people all the time, signs opened up a whole new world of communication for me. And so, Japanese Sign Language became my second language.” Now I’m settled in Britain, I can’t hear or speak English (I can read it), so I use British Sign Language as my third language.”
In her saffron yellow kimono and shimmering turquoise and green dress, Chisato is alternately woman and a force of nature – walking, skipping, crouching, twisting, gliding, flowing and metamorphosing into different states of being. With her seamless blend of Japanese and British sign languages, she evokes a gentle breeze, tumbling water, endurance, hope, fear, grief, love. It’s the whole of our lives rolled into one.
Chisato Minamimura is a Deaf performance artist, choreographer and BSL art guide. Born in Japan, now based in London, Chisato has created, performed and taught internationally and is currently a Work Place artist at The Place.
Chisato trained at Trinity Laban in London and holds a BA in Japanese Painting and MA from Yokohama National University. Chisato approaches choreography and performance making from her unique perspective as a Deaf artist, experimenting with and exploring the visualisation of sound and music. By using dance and technology, Chisato aims to share her experiences of sensory perception and human encounters.
Her digital and live performance work has toured to Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, South Korea, Tunisia, Venezuela and across the UK.
She is currently touring Scored in Silence, and her new work, Mark of A Woman.
To discover more about Chisato and her work, visit: www.chisatominamimura.com