Kazu Nakagawa's solo exhibition opens this coming Friday, 27 March. One of the main works for the show, Lost and Somewhere Else, features the title and opening line from one of Bornholdt's poems. But Bornholdt and Nakagawa have also been working on a collaborative written project, one that resists straightforward description and is best explained as a composition in three parts.

During a period when an injury to his hand during a basketball game prevented him from carving, Nakagawa wrote a short book in Japanese — toward writing an essay for Carving Water Painting Voice, a collaborative migration journey project — reflecting on his art and his life in both Japan and Aotearoa. He then undertook a painstaking translation of the work into English. The third part began when Nakagawa shared his translation with Bornholdt. Written as a careful bridge between Japanese and English, it provided the basis from which she developed her own English-language version in the form of a poem.

Bornholdt's is a fitting retelling of Nakagawa's story, which is itself redolent with poetic allusions and symbolic language. Her poetry returns that voice to an openness and resonance that might otherwise have been lost in prose. Join us for this exciting talk as they discuss Nakagawa's work and this fascinating collaborative project.