It alters our perception and state of being,

Renewing the world that surrounds us.

Marriage. Funeral.

Marking of our paths."

— Rie Hachiyanagi

For those thoroughly enmeshed in occidental reasoning, "getting" Rie Hachiyanagi's installation "Rituals of Being" may be an arduous task. If, on the other hand, we can enlarge our concept of what art should and could be — even for a small moment — there are genuine rewards.

Besides, according to Hachiyanagi, "there's nothing to, quote-unquote, 'get.' There's no right answer."

Viewers/participants need only enter one of the dimly lighted installation domains and wait. With patience and a little mental effort, the art will eventually wash over them with stunning silence and stimulating lucidity.

"I always want my work to be experiential," said Hachiyanagi. "Something that's not necessarily explainable but something experienced by the body and mind."

The 32-year-old Hachiyanagi was16 when she first came to the United States as a high school foreign-exchange student from Japan. Unable to speak English, she began drawing to communicate. For her, art became a necessary vehicle of expression.

Though educated and trained at American universities in the traditional modes of art — today she teaches freshman drawing and advanced studio art (painting, sculpture and printmaking) at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts — Hachiyanagi chose a more conceptual way to express herself: blank, handmade paper.

"Paper without markings remains silent," Hachiyanagi said. "I create blank sheets of paper in order to let this speechlessness be visually loud and to let silence penetrate itself."

Hachiyanagi's philosophy is very much shaped by her Japanese traditions and culture. She grew up with a reverence for paper. "We use paper in Shinto rituals," she said. (Shinto is the ancient Japanese form of worship where plants, animals, deities and humans co-exist as equals.) "Our altars tend to have blank pieces of paper, something without words. It symbolizes cleansing, purity, something that is unspeakable."

According to Hachiyanagi, Shinto does not have texts or a doctrine; rather, worshippers try to learn the way of living by simply living. In their rituals they tend to have lots of blank pieces of paper, folded in certain ways and placed in certain places, which signify or create meaning.

While influenced by Shinto — whether consciously or not — Hachiyanagi doesn't think her preoccupation with the inadequacy of language has much to do with it. "It's about me living in between two cultures, in between two languages."