Marking a space for gathering and reflecting on the presence of those with us and those who came before us.

Matthew Okazaki’s TORII is a participatory sculpture consisting of one fully built Torii Gate and fragments of another scattered in a small cluster for sitting and gathering. In traditional Japanese culture these gates, typically painted vermillion for association with the royal and religious, are found near Shinto shrines and mark a passage from the secular to the sacred. Torii Gates signal a transition from the grounded, earthly world to the spiritual one, a portal from one realm to another.

TORII is placed at Lot Lab in proximity to the Marine Barracks Torii Gate, which is inaccurate in function, scale, and color, and aims to rectify the gate's loss of meaning and honor the artist’s Japanese American cultural heritage. This artwork opens a portal into Lot Lab, functioning as a threshold from the Charlestown Navy Yard into a site for reflection on the complex and diverse histories that make up people and places.

An architect by training, Okazaki’s work centers around a creative practice of “making do.” He emphasizes place-knowing and archival research in his practice, recently investigating the resilient spirit of domestic interiors in Japanese-American WWII internment camps, which the artist’s own grandfather experienced. By illuminating historical practices of “making do,” Okazaki calls attention to tactics of adaptability by embracing ordinary materials for the creation of new meaning. This is why TORII is made of readily available construction materials–concrete, recycled wood, rebar, and rope– and conveys a state of incompleteness and timelessness. The artist notes: “The Torii Gate is merely a beacon, a funnel, an instrument that allows access to this space that celebrates both the bodily and the spiritual, that welcomes not just ourselves but our community, our ancestors and those who came before us, and the kami (spirits) we cannot see but that is present all around us.”

Local artist Maria Fong has designed interactable paper charms that attach to TORII’s vertical column, inspired in form by zigzag-shaped streamers commonly found on Torii Gates called Shide. Visitors to Lot Lab are invited to engage with a Public Art Ambassador on weekends to share responses to the prompt “Where is your community? Who or what is an important presence in your community?”