September, 2024. In response to sooim lee and Xinyi Liu
Emma Ike is an arts administrator and museum educator. She currently works as the Manager of Education at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum and is based in New York City.
Instagram @emmaike
Isamu Noguchi signing a work in stone in Mure, 1979.
Photo: Michio Noguchi ©INFGM / ARS
Photo: Michio Noguchi ©INFGM / ARS
I have been thinking a lot about names—the weight of the ones we are given and the ones we choose, the way they evolve through time and translation. It was meaningful to be introduced to you both on your own terms, as the vast sea and a wildflower. I often imagine myself as a pond, after my father’s surname, Ike (池).
Your correspondence, exploring the dynamic connections between art, family, identity, and migration, reminded me of how the Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi came to his own name. When Noguchi was born, he was officially unnamed until he was almost three years old. Upon arriving in Japan from California with his mother, his father named him “Isamu,” meaning “courageous.” As a high school student in Indiana, he chose to go by “Sam Gilmour” and later reclaimed his given name and Japanese surname as a burgeoning artist in New York:
“I decided almost involuntarily to change my name. I could see my mother’s consternation, but she did not object, helping me rather in my travail, away from her, toward Japan, and the way that I had chosen.”
I look forward to hearing the story that undergirds the soft lowercase letters of your name, sooim, and am grateful for Xinyi’s thoughtful inquiry around authorship and how we define ourselves through such poetics.
Emma