Loss has a way of leaving marks that ripple across generations and shaping memory and identity in unexpected ways. For Toronto-based artist Louise Noguchi, Nuit Blanche 2025 is an opportunity to make those marks visible—literally—through her monumental new project The Shape of Loss.
Born in Toronto in 1958, Noguchi is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans video, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. Over a career that now spans five decades, she has used her art to probe identity, memory and the often uneasy boundary between appearance and reality. Much of her work blurs the lines between truth and illusion, memory and myth—concerns which remain central to her teaching at OCAD University, and to her art, which has been exhibited across Canada and internationally.
Journeying into the past
Noguchi explains that this exhibition began with a deeply personal journey into her family’s past, which she undertook after the death of her father Kiichi Noguchi. “Many of my great aunts and uncles worked in the [Canadian] fishing industry, and my grandmother was employed at a cannery,” she recalls. Yet because her father “harboured deep resentment towards British Columbia for how he and his family were treated – making it clear he never wanted to return,” she “never discussed his prewar experiences with him. There was undeniably a wound that remained unhealed.”
This became clear in an interview conducted shortly before her father died. In it, he revealed that working at the Koyama Fish Camp had been one of the few high points of his early life. After his death, Noguchi was moved to travel to Gabriola Island, where the camp once stood, to understand those experiences better. This trip then expanded into a deeper archival investigation. It turned out that her grandfather had been the last secretary of the Japanese Fishermen’s Benevolent Society, and had witnessed the Canadian government’s confiscation of Japanese Canadian fishing boats during the Second World War. She began studying Kishizo Kimura’s Fishing Ledger, which recorded the seized vessels.
“My research ties into my enduring fascination with the blurred line between hunter and hunted, a theme I’ve explored since art school,” Noguchi says. “The Shape of Loss examines how Japanese Canadian fishermen—citizens at the time—were labeled enemy aliens and dispossessed by their own government. This work underscores the duality of identity – especially the tension between being both Canadian and Japanese. Noguchi stresses that the title “The Shape of Loss” connotes both a material absence and an emotional void: it “reflects the tangible reality of losing so many fishing boats and the profound effect this had on families,” while signifying loss that extends far beyond those directly impacted.
Turning the abstract into soaring reality
“Although I was born after the war and did not experience internment—or the dramatic loss endured by my grandparents and parents”, she notes, “this history continues to trouble me. And for fourth- and fifth-generation Japanese Canadians, the sense of loss might feel even more abstract, as knowledge of these events is often secondhand, without the benefit of direct family accounts – which brings its own set of challenges.”
Noguchi ultimately decided to transform the ledger into a vast visual statement composed of drawings of each hull – scale-mapped to life size – filling the 60-foot gallery walls with the outlines of 1,337 boats. The work’s vastness was an absolute necessity: “I wanted to physically comprehend the size of these boats, and to understand their scale in relation to the human body. As an artist, drawing the boats life-size was the only way I could achieve this.”
Co-creating an experience, not an installation
Over the twelve hours of Nuit Blanche, Noguchi—with the support of announcers, narrators, collaborators and co-conspirators—will replicate each confiscated hull on gallery walls. Volunteers will serve tea, and visitors can linger, bear witness, and take in the experience. Texts and archival material on Japanese Canadian history accompany the performance.
The Shape of Loss thus becomes a live, co-created event, as much as an installation. And that event promises to be both magical and meaningful, judging by Noguchi’s impassioned account of a rehearsal: “the artists drawing the boats moved as if choreographed. It was beautiful, even though each artist worked to their own rhythm, and none are performance artists per se.” She anticipates that visitors will first experience the project as a performance in mark-making, but then gradually attend to the histories being spoken aloud. Descendants of Japanese Canadian fishermen will read aloud details of their families’ confiscated boat(s), and at times share stories or collaborate by reading others’ accounts. “Some may not share personal stories, but their presence is what matters most. Standing before us, they represent their relatives and affirm that this history is neither forgotten nor erasable.”
Originally, Noguchi had hoped the project would begin in Toronto but ultimately conclude on the West Coast. However, because she could not secure a venue large enough to accommodate the full drawings outside of Toronto, she resolved instead to complete the work here. Still, she plans to produce a stop-motion video of the Nuit Blanche performance, combining stories and video from announcers and descendants, so that Japanese Canadian communities on the West Coast can experience the project, even if they cannot host the full installation.
As Nuit Blanche transforms Toronto into a citywide stage, The Shape of Loss invites audiences not just to witness history, but to live in its unfolding. Through the act of drawing, the cadence of voices, and the presence of descendants reclaiming their families’ stories, Noguchi’s work restores voice to the silenced. “Standing before us, they represent their relatives, and affirm that this history is neither forgotten nor erasable.”
The performance opens October 4 at 7:00 pm and runs through the night until October 5 at 7:00 am at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC). Both the drawn hulls and a time-lapse video of the overnight event will remain on view in the JCCC Gallery until the exhibition closes January 23, 2026. Details are available on jclegacies.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
