COLUMN #154 Belonging in Metaphor

When my family and I immigrated to Canada in 1995, we lost something; when anybody leaves their birthplace to live a life in another country, they lose something. When I moved to Japan in 2017, I once again lost something. I lost the urban city I once knew, the vast lands and wide spaces of Canada. As I took on another foreign land, I also took on its physical, cultural, and emotional landscapes to help me mediate a sense of belonging.

As I navigate my journey in Japan I often reflect on literary critic Northrop Frye, whose words deeply influenced me as a teenager. Frye believed that “we participate in society through our imagination, or the quality of our social vision. All our ideas of what society could and should be are structured by metaphor, as metaphor is the unit of all imagination.” Engaging with others means stepping into each other’s imaginative visions of what life could be. It’s through this shared exchange that we create belonging.

Immigrating is an act of imagination. I’ve had to envision how my words, my actions, might be received, as the same words can be defined differently in different cultures. Practicing empathy to carve out a sense of belonging was—and still is—essential. As a curator, this imaginative intuition is crucial. I mediate between creators and viewers, making room for ideas, emotions, and metaphors to intertwine. Curating is creating spaces of belonging—where both artists and audiences are invited into a shared circle.

Growing up in Canada, I learned much about the culture and traditions of the Indigenous peoples. One concept that resonated deeply with me was the Circle. The Ojibwe, like many other Indigenous tribes, view the Circle as a space of inclusiveness, a structure without hierarchy or power, but instead grounded in expansion and connection. In the Circle, newcomers are welcomed not by force but by creating space. As the Circle widens, new traditions and new cultures are born.

This idea of the ever-expanding Circle speaks to how I’ve come to understand community and society. In Canada, I entered a Circle that had been there long before me, and in Japan, I entered another. But in each case, it’s not about assimilating entirely—it's about contributing to the existing structure while also allowing that structure to evolve. I may come from another place, with different roots and a different language, but by participating in the imaginative exchange of culture, I become part of the Circle, expanding it ever further.