It was almost 30 years ago, one steamy, hot summer day, when Hiromi Stringer saw someone walking a Siberian Husky dog on a busy street in Bangkok, Thailand. It was when the word globalization started to appear here and there. Why a Siberian anything in Thailand?

Stringer wanted to know about the world she lived. She came to this foreign country, the US, when she was in her 30s. A personal paradigm shift including cultural and language differences strengthened her curiosity of wanting to make sense of this place. Mundane quotidian objects of our times surely inform us about our current existence. Both events and “stuff” in our lives have root causes or reasons. My approach is using the mundane as an extension of the broader world.

In this body of work, Stringer chose to use a micro perspective to see her world by borrowing Umeyama’s view. Umeyama is not a hero, rather, he is a mediocre scholar who time-travels to various times and places. His base point is the Japan of 170 years ago. His time was when the country was under governmental enforced national isolation.

Stringer sees some similarities between one’s process of knowing and living with very limited information about other countries. There are many parallels between him and herself, but he is not her alter ego. She uses him to see the world more objectively through his subjective view, yet some traces of her subjectivity are not denied in her works.

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until January 7, 2024.