Back in Sweden

We have now left Japan after one very interesting month. Our greatest thanks to the persons that have met us, sent us information and supported the project in different ways.

Please check this site for SJCAGF-updates!

Dinner with Rebecca Jennison

We just came back to Tokyo after spending two days in Kyoto where we met with Rebecca Jennison, professor at Kyoto Seika University in the department of humanities, division of culture and arts. Jennison has, among other things, worked on publications concerning Japanese art that has a feminist standpoint. To name just one: Imagination without borders: Feminist artist Tomiyama Taeko and social responsibility (2010, co-edited with Laura Hein). The publication is also an example of the difficulties that seems to be attached to the concept of feminism. The insertion of the word "feminist" in the title was done after lengthy discussions between the editors and the artist. What happens when an artist is labelled feminist?

Over dinner we talked about how the situation for feminism is and has been in Kyoto for the last couple of decades. Jennison has lived in Japan for about 30 years and has been a part of the continuing discussion about what feminisms can and should be under that time. She talked about the last couple of years as a backlash but as many others that we have spoken to during our time here, she hopes that the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 will bring new, creative thinking.

Meeting Yoshiko Shimada

SJCAGF met artist Yoshiko Shimada at her gallery Ota Fine Arts in Roppongi. Shimada just came back from London where she’s participating in the exhibition Art, Performance and Activism at the Pumphouse gallery, a show we mentioned earlier. The recent exhibiton stemmes from Art of Intervention, a cultural exchange program between Kyoto and London that was held in 2008-10.


Shimada is renowned for working on topics such as Japanese history, women, feminism, violence and nationalism. Her new works are based on East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front and are part of a larger project concerning alternative art education which she hope to launch at an exhibition in Europe in 2013. Shimada is, together with Alice Maude-Roxby, doing research on a project that will compare three different alternative art institutions, namely: the Intermedia Center at Iowa University (which was established by Hans Breder and Anna Mendieta),  Bigakko (established by publisher Gendai Shicho-sha in 1969, where Shimada has both studied and teached) and Experimental Skolen in Copenhagen. Since 2011, Shimada is a PhD candidate in the Art, Design and Architecture Department at Kingston University in UK. She is particularly interested in Japanese performance art from 1960's and -70's.


Shimada is one of the first Japanese artists that we have met since we started this project that actually calls herself a feminist. Our discussion with Shimada focused a lot on the situation for feminism in Japan, both from a historical and a contemporary context. We hope that we can present some of the issues that came up at a later stage of this project.

Meeting Minako Nishiyama

Right now Minako Nishiyama is presenting her work at 3331 Arts Syd. We sat down with the artist in the exhibition space and talked about her artistic practice. The exhibition includes a new installation consisting of photos from Akihabara, an area located not far from 3331 Arts Syd, that has close connotations with Japanese concepts like otaku and maiden cafes. This work impelled Nishiyama to include some of her earlier works in the exhibition. The geographical proximity to Akihabara gave rise to an artistic connection between her present work and parts of her oeuvre from the middle of the 1990s. During that period Nishiyama made works that in different ways dealt with the close visual resemblance between aesthetic expression directed to young girls and the kind of visual images that were used in the Japanese sex industry. Her present works shows a more subtle and architectural expression but clearly makes the viewer aware of that the desire for kawaii is not changing.

Meeting Kyongfa Che

This Saturday we went to meet Kyongfa Che who is a freelance curator based in Tokyo. Che has worked with various cultural institutions, for example: Singapore Art Musum, Contemporary Art Center of South Australia, Japan Foundation and Gwangju Biennale. Our conversation concerned both the role of feminism in Japan today but also what the contemporary art climate looks like in Tokyo and how the art scene is structured. Where does the conversations take place and what kind of art enters the institutions and galleries?

Here is one extract from Che's reflections regarding her own practice since she moved to Tokyo five years ago: "I've started working with a small group of people who are really hungry for discursive projects beacuse there was no base for that. I don't know if it's Japan or Tokyo but the art scene here has no base for critical thinking or critical discourse. When I first moved here I thought, is there anything I could do here? All the things that are going on here are spectacular and nicely packaged. I don't know, It's all about sensitivity. So I have been struggling a bit. But there are also people who are hungry for more discursive practices and philosophical thinking behind artistic practice so we have been organizing all sorts of things. These are the main things that I have been doing."

Che is one among many people we have met since we started working with this project that have expressed a surprised reaction to our aim of discussing the situation for feminism in Japan. Here is an extract from Che's thoughts regarding feminism: "The feminism here is not alive. People don't take it serious. The feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s was not as profound as in New York for example. Feminist have been viewed as uptight, hard-core and angry with men. The best strategy to practice the discourse is maybe not to talk about it and don't call it feminism?"

For us these short extracts seems to be connected in some way. If there is very small room for critical discourse in the art institutions, where should a critical conversation about feminist strategies take place? Who should present feminist art works and who should response to them?

Preparing for Atsuko Tanaka's retrospective

Right now we are preparing for a visit to the MOT this weekend and we decided to share some notes with you.


This winter, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT) will hold simultaneous exhibitions on the three following keywords of Japanese contemporary art: ‘Gutai’, ‘Fluxus’ and ‘Experimental Workshop’. Being one of Japans most renowned avant-garde artists in 19th century, Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) is given a big retrospective called ‘TANAKA Atsuko - Art of Connecting‘ in February.


Atsuko Tanaka was born in Osaka, joined the Art Institute of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in 1950 and the Department of Western Painting at Kyoto Municipal College of Art (now Kyoto City University of Arts) the following year. After having met the artist Akira Kanayama, Tanaka joined the avant-garde group Gutai Art Association (funded by artist Jiro Yoshihara) in 1955. Soon she got well known for her experimental drawings, sculptures and happenings.


In the recent years, her reputation has increased and in 2007 her works were exhibited at Documenta 12. The art critic Haruo Fukuzumi, editor-in-chief and founder of the Japanese art journal AIDA gave a talk on “TANAKA Atsuko and her environment – The position of female artists in Japan”. In the talk, he depicted the ambivalent position of women artists in Japanese society, which he meant had long been characterised by sexual discrimination. Find a review of it here.


Another voice on Tanakos works is Art historian Françoise Levaillant, here quoted by Yoko Hasegawa in “Performativity in the work of female Japanese artists”, Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, New York : Museum of Modern Art, 2010:

“In contrast to the approach of Tanaka’s male artist associates, who, when using their bodies in their artistic activities, did so in essentially energetic ways, often directly, expressionistically, or aggressively, Tanaka used the energy of the materials themselves to give the materials as much sculptural richness as possible. Paradoxically, by putting restriction on the female body, (Tanaka), liberated the female body from the terribly pumped up gestures that were a characteristic of the work of the group’s male artists when they used their bodies. All she did was pretend to exhibit/expose herself.”


The following text is an extract from the press release from the retrospective at the MOT:


"In 2012 the world’s eye turns its eye towards Japan’s avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, such as ‘Gutai’ or ‘Experimental Workshop’. Stimulated by Western avant-garde art in the postwar years, Japanese artists decided that they wanted to create a form of art that ‘nobody had seen before’, and they set about it with a straightforward, yet fresh sensitivity and overflowing energy. Among them was TANAKA Atsuko who displayed an outstanding and unique talent as a woman member of the Gutai group. Unlike other Japanese avant-garde women artists of the time, such as ONO Yoko or KUSAMA Yayoi, she did not move to New York in search of expressional freedom and achieve fame there, instead TANAKA remained in Japan where she experimented with her own forms of expression. In the ‘Documenta 12’ exhibition in 2007 her ‘Electric Dress’ attracted great attention and then a large-scale work of hers, from the collection of MOMA, was featured in an exhibition in 2010, her reputation growing like a ‘late- blooming flower’."


Below is Tanaka's most famous work, Electric Dress from 1957. In this piece, where the traditional kimono is updated to a dress that consists of "approximately one hundred fluorescent tubes and approximately eighty light bulbs, painted in nine colors of enamel paint and worn like a garment" (the MOT press release), the old traditional Japanese society meets the new industrial, technological era. Tanaka costumed herself in the sculpture, as in the tradition of a Japanese marriage ceremony.

Trans-Asia

Don’t miss n.paradoxa’s recent new issue that focus on the Asian region in relation to feminist artistic practice. Though examples from Japan have been left out, the subject of “trans-Asia” and issues concerning the national, the diasporic and the global is of great concern for artists that are based in Japan.

"Trans-Asia", volume 29, Jan 2012, n.paradoxa international feminist art journal 

"The problematic definition of 'feminist' in relation to contemporary art in the region and to the invention or creation of a category of 'women's art' is discussed in each article or interview by artists and critics alongside the question of women's rights and the visibility of women artists in patriarchal and male-dominated cultures".
From editorial by Katy Deepwell  

Meeting with Ayako Shimada

Ayako Shimada, curator based in Tokyo. Works at Yumiko Chiba Associates.

Born Yokohama and was brought up during the recession in Japan.  BA. in cultural anthropology. Shimada is interested in art from a sociological perspective, working around questions for how art could work in our daily life. Studied at the International Curators program in Stockholm.

SJCAJF met Shimada at a café in Shinagawa-ku and talked about her work and also her thoughts about feminisms in Japan. Here is an extract from her responses regarding feminisms.

“We have a difference between male and female, men and women in the society. And its true that we sometimes feel frustrated about it but it doesn’t create much energy to work around feminism in Japan. The way people react to their frustration is different than from how you deal with it in Europe. Especially younger people or people in my age - maybe in general- first try to accept something before making a change. It sometimes makes things more clear but also sometimes worse. It’s partly because of that that I suspect feminism is not that influential in Japan. We had women leading feminist movements during the 1960s- and 1970s and we achieved a certain amount of change.

I cannot see much feminism in contemporary Japanese art. It’s easier to find that kind of art in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But a few examples could be mentioned. A few years ago the Japanese pavilion at Venice biennale was presenting photographer Ishiuchi Miyako and her works Mother’s. Another example from a year or two ago is Miwa Yanagi who presented her series with very lively grandmothers. For me individually, the reason why I don’t become active in feminism is that though there is a difference between men and women in the society, it is still not bothering me that much so I use my energy for doing other things rather than working for feminism. And I don’t know if that apply for other people as well, its only one individual example.”

The answers collected from this meeting seem to illustrate a perceived gap between the art that was produced from a feminist standpoint under the 1960s – 70s and a contemporary art production. Could this discrepancy suggest that feminism is perceived in singular and as a movement, connected with past times, rather than continuing political perspectives? This extract only gives us one perspective and we will continue to address these questions in forthcoming meetings.

Ayako Shimada at Mitsukuni Takimoto's solo exhibition "What i to curve, what is to be curved", BTAT - Tokyo Gallery+Beijing Tokyo Art Projects. 

At the library

One important aspect of our research in Tokyo is to visit libraries for the books and catalogues that are sometimes hard to find outside of Japan. Many of the best libraries belongs to Museums, as for example does the library at The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. It's a small but informative place with interesting and always up-to-date titles on art and photography. They also hold a big archive for older exhibition catalogues.


The TMMP Chief Curator Michiko Kasahara has had her post since 2006, coming directly from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) where she among other shows organized the exhibition "Life Actually: The works of Contemporary Japanese Women" (2005). Before becoming the Chief Curator at the TMMP and working for the MOT, she was also a curator at the TMMP between 1989-2002.


Often focusing on contemporary Japanese photography, Kasahara has curated shows at the TMMP as "On Your Body" (2008), "On Landscape" (2002), and "Kiss in the Dark" (2001).


Among Kasaharas earlier shows that are of special interest to SJCAGF are: "Love's Body: Rethinking the Naked and the Nude in Photography" (1998), "Gender Beyond Memory: The Works of Contemporary Women Artists" (1996), both at TMMP.


Extra: During Kasaharas tenure at MOT, she was appointed as the commissioner for Japan at the fifty-first Venice Biennale (2005) to curate Ishiuchi Miyako — "Mother's 2000–2005: Traces of the Future", find the catalogue here.

For our readers in London!

Tonight at the Japan Foundation from 6.30pm "Art, Performace & Activism - in conversation: Yoshiko Shimada and Soni Kum" together with curators Professor Fran Lloyd, a Japan Foundation Fellow of Kingston University, London and Professor Rebecca Jennison of Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto

The exhibition Art, Performance and Activism in Contemporary Japan will run at the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park from 19 January to 26 February 2012.

See the Japan Foundation London for more information. 

To the light

Right now there is an exhibition with Yoko Ono at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo. With hope as a guiding star, Ono's exhibition responds to the aftermath of the great earthquake. In the work TO THE LIGHT (see image) the visitor is invited to follow a dark and mysterious maze that eventually leads to a source of light.

Ono is an artist of great significance in the feminist art discourse in Japan, but of course also in an international context. In the literature surrounding both Japanese women artists as well as the feminist artists she takes a prominent position, often in company with artists like Atsuko Tanaka, Yayoi Kusama, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota and Mako Idemitsu.

Here is just one example for further reading:

Midori Yoshimoto, Into performance, Japanese women artists in New York, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger University Press, 2005.

"Unusually courageous and self-determined, they were among the first Japanese women to leave their country-and its male-dominated, conservative art world-to explore the artistic possibilities in New York. They not only benefited from the New York art scene, however, they played a major role in the development of international performance and intermedia art by bridging avant garde movements in Tokyo and New York. This book traces the pioneering work of these five women artists and the socio-cultural issues that shaped their careers. Into Performance also explores the transformation of these artists' lifestyle from traditionally confined Japanese women to internationally active artists. Yoshimoto demonstrates how their work paved the way for younger Japanese women artists who continue to seek opportunities in the West today."
/Rutger University Press

Tokyo Wonder Site

Tokyo Wonder Site is the Institute of Contemporary Arts and International Cultural Exchange in Tokyo, an art center dedicated to the generation and promotion of new art and culture since 2001. TWS was first created by the Japanese Government as the Tokyo Wonder Wall in 2000, a new innovative exhibitionspace for emerging artists in Tokyo. The Government was dealing with the aftereffects of the economic bubble around the millennium where many artists lacked economic support and places to display their works. Tokyo Wonder Wall meant to discover and support these emerging artists, and has now grown til the big organization it is today, with three different locations around town: Hongo, Shibuya and Aoyama, each with a unique focus.

TWS Hongo works mainly with young talents and with the still-existing Tokyo Wonder Wall. TWS Shibuya is the global cultural network in Japan and abroad that functions as an international platform. TWS Aoyama opened the Creator-in-Residence program in 2006, an international program for all genres and nationalities with the aim to create a platform for shared processes. TWS also collaborates with IASPIS in Sweden.
 
TWS are arranging different programs and events throughout the year, from the ongoing Tokyo Experimental Festival - Sound, Art & Performance to the International Advisor Talk, organized together with the Open Studio day.

This year's first Open Studio took place on the 21st of January and included works by 15 artists, both from Japan and abroad. 
 

Visting Ryusuke Kido's studio. 

SJCAGF visited when the International Advisor was the wellknown curator David Elliott. Elliott is the Artistic Director of the Kyiv International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Ukraine) in 2012, former Director of Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), and former Director of the Modern Art Museum (Stockholm) between 1996-2001. Elliott gave a lecture on curating contemporary art with a focus on asian art. The talk was called "Looking for comparisons. Thoughts about curating contemporary art". 

Of particular interest for us was the part of the presentation thar concerned the exhibition Bye Bye Kitty - curated by Elliott - that was shown at the Japan Society in New York in 2011. Organized as an attempt to go beyond the stereotypes that has marked the view of contemporary Japanese culture from a Western perspective, Elliott's proposal departed from what he described as Japan's "five epic struggles" namely that; between the generations, between the sexes, with history and tradition, with the self and with nature. The question of the role of feminism in Japanese art was touched upon briefly, mainly through hasty examples of some of the works that were chosen for the exhibition. The catalogue that accompanied the exhibition includes a text by Elliott that supposedly should give some remarks on the subject.

 Elliott's presentation, translated into Japanese.

Triple Fantasy

An important aspect of our stay in Tokyo is to meet different artists that are based here. We went to the opening of the exhibition "triple fantasy" at Shashinkosha art print gallery in Kanda where Fumiko Imano, Kotori Kawashima and EikiMori presented new works. 

Fumiko Imano's works in the exhibition had funeral photographs as a starting point and was conceived in some aspects as a response to the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The photographs ultimately evolve around the possibility of self-presentation.    

Performance by Fumiko Imano. 

Fumiko Imano

Eiki Mori in front of one of his photographs. 

Galleries

Our first step here in Tokyo has been to get some idea of what the art map looks like and what kind of exhibitions that are shown at the moment. The contemporary art scene does not have an obvious centre and the galleries and museums for contemporary art are scattered around the enormous city. 

The Artcomplex Center of Tokyo in Shinjuku-ku. The complex was divided in several small rooms on the second floor where each artist had his/her own space. Our impression was that the Artcomplex works like a space for relatively unestablished artists.

http://www.gallerycomplex.com/

NADiff, a building in Ebisu Shibuya-ku, that contains several galleries. 

http://www.nadiff.com/

At the time of our visit, Japanese artist Ken Kitano's photographs from the series “our face project: Asia” was shown at Gallery MEM. With globalization and identity as subjects, Kitano has travelled the world and made an interesting kind of layered group portraits from each location.

More information about the project can be found on the artist's website: http://www.ourface.com/english/works/ourface.html

Industrial building in Kiyosumi that incorporates TomioKoyama Gallery, Taka Ishii Gallery, Hiromi Yoshii, and Shugoarts.

The same building, on our way to the galleries.