Coral Sea

Image derived from naval blueprints, reconfigured into a speculative structural system that merges elements from opposing wartime technologies. Drawing from family history connected to the Pacific War, the image combines forms from a U.S. submarine, components of a Japanese aircraft carrier, and infrastructural elements associated with passage and departure. These references are abstracted through line, density, and repetition, producing coral-like accretions that shift the diagram from engineered structure toward organic form that blur distinctions between machine and organism.

The work extends into a multi-part installation presented aboard the battleship USS Iowa (Coral Sea: The Unsung Battle of the South Pacific), installed within a former passage space repurposed as a gallery. The installation brings together the blueprint image, a hand-constructed propeller model, framed family photographs from both American and Japanese lineages, a fictional postage stamp reimagining the Coral Sea as a geopolitical entity, and a series of woodblock prints drawing on the tonal register of shin hanga.

Across these elements, systems of navigation, representation, and memory are translated and recomposed. Parallel wartime perspectives are brought into a shared spatial context, where histories of opposition coexist and become entangled, reflecting on the fragile and contingent nature of fate.

Eight Views of the South Pacific
Shin hanga prints

Coral Sea
2019–2020
USS Iowa / Alpha Romeo Tango
installation