Awareness of Between-ness: Memory and Time 

Originally developed as her PhD project at the Australian National University, Awareness of Between-ness: Memory and Time explored the space between her childhood memories in Japan and her recollections of English street trees prior to the onset of COVID-19. The project approaches place as both spatial and temporal — a site where memory allows time to be visualised and felt. Rather than asking why memories fade or become distant, the work considers how memory may be reconstructed through atmosphere, material process and embodied experience.

Although the doctoral exhibition has concluded, the project continues to evolve. The loss of her father last year intensified her memories of place in Japan, while many of the Australian street trees that once marked her surroundings have themselves been absorbed into memory and time. This shifting terrain of presence and absence informs her ongoing practice. Working across photography, painting, light and installation, Watanabe examines photography’s capacity to register the tensions between memory and place. As an intercultural artist who has lived half her life in Japan and half in Australia, she continues to investigate how relational space shapes perception, experience and belonging.