Chisato Minamimura
Chisato Minamimura is a Deaf artistic director, performer and BSL art guide based in London.
Minamimura’s artistic practice involves the creation of new art forms through the meshing of sensory perception, visual score, Sign Mime, BSL art guiding, digital technology and performance. She has a particular interest in the visualisation of sound and music from her Deaf perspective, and has developed what she terms a ‘visual score’, which uses dance movement to convey musical sound.
Among the artist’s most notable works to date are Ring the Changes+, which appeared at our Purcell Room as part of 2014’s Unlimited festival; Heysychia, a film work for the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology; Deaf for 4' 33", a Deaf reimagining of John Cage’s notable composition; and Scored in Silence, a solo digital performance which unpacked the perspectives of Deaf survivors of Hiroshima.
‘I am so pleased to be working at the Southbank Centre again, it has always been a beacon of progressive, exciting contemporary performance work in London and I'm honoured to be able to partner with them to develop my new work.’
Through her Southbank Centre Studio Minamimura will be continuing the development of her new work Mark of a Woman, an accessible exploration into women’s social, cultural and historical relationships to tattooing.
As the artist explains, through the Studio she hopes ‘to develop an exciting new performance work which combines visual vernacular, live performance and digital technology from my Deaf perspective… This opportunity offers incredible access to significant resources to help realise [this] new performance work… I'm aiming to get a better understanding of the way in which the elements of the work intersect [as I] refine and finalise the production elements, ready to premiere’.
Minamimura's Southbank Centre Studio is an Unlimited UK Partner Award 2023 commission with Southbank Centre made possible thanks to funding from Arts Council England.