Terue Yamauchi
  • Artist

Terue Yamauchi

In 2010, she came across an old photograph of a naked ama diver (professional female diver) and was so shocked that the image of Japanese people and human beings that she held until then began to dissolve. Since then, she continues to create her work, based on the appearance of humans and the world as the fundamental point of the sea, while staying in various areas of mainly the Kuroshio and Tsushima Warm Currents. In 2013, she graduated from Jeju Hansupul Haenyeo School (Jeju Island, Korea), where she mastered underwater photography. Since 2015, she has been living and working on the Mindanao coast (The Philippines), and has expanded her field to include the sea of Asia. The long film “Tsureshio”, produced and set in the Genkai Sea, which is the origin of her recent activity, and she won the Encouragement Award at the Tokyo Documentary Film Festival. In 2020, she began to confront her family’s history, of living in Busan under Japanese rule, seeking ways to cross the straits and understand inner boundaries.

  • “Kabugwas” (2016)

    “Kabugwas” (2016)

    Terue Yamauchi personally engages with the lives of people living on the sea, and creates her works based on her experience andthe worldview that emerges from there. The title of the film, “Kabugwas”, is a Bisayan word (mainly used in the south-central Philippines) which means a “star” used as a landmark to determine the direction of navigation. This work, filmed using diving techniques which she learned at the Haenyeo School on Jeju Island, is like a universe in flux, involving everything, and also seems to evoke the presence of the mother ocean hidden within us.

    Tanabe Station Street

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    Tanabe Station Street

    The shopping street in front of Tanabe Station was also a ‘post town’ on the way to the World Heritage Sites, Tokei Shrine- which divided the fate of the Genpei war, and Kumano Kodo. Last year's landscape improvement project eliminated electricity poles and transformed the arcades into shades (small roofs). The image of the town has completely changed and at night, the arcade is a feast for the eyes with its indirect lighting.

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      “Kabugwas” (2016) Terue Yamauchi
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