Chikako Yamashiro engages with political and social histoires of Okinawa to create haunting works drawing on oral accounts. Her work reveals lesser-known aspects of Okinawa’s contemporary reality, while questioning dominant historical accounts of Japanese and American occupation of the islands. The site of fierce battles between the US and Japan at the end of World War 2, Okinawa still has a high concentration of American military bases, occupying around 20 per cent of the land — despite the wish of many of its natives. Yamashiro’s work spans performance, filmmaking and photography, employing bodies as vehicles through which to carry stories from marginalised voices, bodies and souls from Okinawa, through uniquely poetic imaginings.