In her latest exhibition, Midst, Megumi Shauna Arai uses soft, subtle metaphors to address the many, often ambiguous layers of her Jewish and Japanese heritage. 

While trained as a photographer, Megumi Shauna Arai often combines sculpture, fibers, and exercises with culturally significant materials to emphasize this splintering complexity. Her latest exhibition, Midst at Seattle's Jacob Lawrence Gallery is a series of photographs of bodies suspended in water exhibited amidst three installations referencing Japanese folk practices for honoring sacred space. In a piece in one room titled "did you not know, I was waiting for you?" a hobo bag with elements of Japanese stitching stands propped up in cinder blocks like flowers in a makeshift vase. In another piece titled "Interior Frontiers," sets of rice straw rope resembling a crown of thorns hang from the ceiling and entryway and wrap around the entire space. In another piece, "  simultaneously (the border of a great belonging)," a similar rope connects two small boulders like a tin can telephone, but hangs loosely without the tension one might expect.

While each piece in the show has a very specific origin, there is an open-ended-ness that allows viewers to float through the gallery and gather their own meaning. I spoke with the artist to learn more about her process of making the work, and how her own sense of identity fits into it all.