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The First Steps: Emerging Artists from Japan

Hiroko Shimizu, Installation views of Tricky, 1998, video installation. Photo courtesy of Grey Art Gallery.

By Hama Makino

The seven contemporary Japanese artists featured in this year’s The First Steps: Emerging Artists from Japan are the youngest group of winners yet in this biennial exhibit sponsored by Philip Morris. This awards competition gives contemporary Japanese artists between the ages of 20 to 40 an opportunity to step into the international art world, and carve themselves a path as an artist in Japan. Currently, the contemporary art scene within Japan is relatively non-existent, in comparison to its American counterpart.

The established art community in Japan continues to focus on traditional disciplines, often overshadowing the development of contemporary media and ideas. However, among the younger generations, thinking towards modernity and westernization has been of great importance. In the wake of the otaku (“techie”) youth culture, it is not surprising find contemporary Japanese artists that seekopportunities for their work to be recognized, globally and locally.

None of the pieces at The First Steps exhibition necessarily conjure stylistic feelings or nuances of traditional “things Japanese.” In speaking to several of the artists, it became increasingly apparent that there are elements intertwined that are part of a newer Japanese aesthetic.

“The strength of technology as a medium is quite prominent,” says Lynn Gumpert, the director of the Grey Art Gallery and one of the jurors for the competition. “Perhaps due to the fact that Japan has successfully carved itself a position in the world as a leader in technology.”

MMMProject, Installation view of Memories of Media, 2000, mixed-media video installation. Photo courtesy of Grey Art Gallery.

The most culturally alluring piece was by a group of seven students that met in their undergraduate years at Keio University in Tokyo. Their collaborative effort was coined MMM Project, the acronym for Multi-Media Modeling. In Memory of Media, the installation piece that won them a ticket to New York, they combine video and black and white photography. In a dimly lit room sit five monitors depicting different clips of metropolitan life in Kamakura, a historic city south of Tokyo. Scenes of a commuter train with students and businessmen flash on screen, as a shot of a Shinto shrine torii is serenely captured on another. Modern electronica serves as soft background music. At the entrance of the room hangs a larger-than-life sized monochromatic print of the same torii, where a woman awaits to cross the railroad tracks as a train whizzes by.

Memory of Media does a successful job of capturing and freezing a single moment in time, tuning in to both the new and the old. The long history of Japan and its advancement since the days of shrines and torii is reflected in the contrast between the still photos and the moving video clips. It gives the viewer a snapshot of the crossroads of traditional and modern Japanese culture. In a country where popular culture amongst the young is particularly inundated with Western (primarily American) influences, it is refreshing to see that there are youth today who cherish the rich historical and cultural past of Japan.

Along the same vein as Memory of Media is Sayaka Akiyama’s project, Aluku (aluku is “to walk” in Japanese). The two primary objects of the muti-pieced installation are Aluku — My Domestic Walking Model (Sagamiono) and Aluku — My Domestic Walking Model (New York: Jan. 10 – Feb. 10). The pieces show an enlarged map of Akiyama’s neighborhood in Sagamiono and New York City, respectively. In both cases, a large map transferred onto fabric is heavily stitched with colorful thread in specific, concentrated areas, retracing the artist’s steps and paths over time. Akiyama grapples with a theme similar to that of MMM Project, but on a more personal level. The resulting Aluku project is spawned from Akiyama’s dilemma of conceptualizing a walk in a tangible manner, while simultaneously capturing a period of time. In the New York version of her “domestic walking model” piece, the artist meticulously records and traces all of the streets and avenues that she frequented within a month. It is in some ways a voyeuristic reflection of Akiyama’s time spent.

Akiyama and MMM Project have completely different approaches to presenting their works, yet they also have a common underlying theme. As Gumpert says, “The themes that the artists grapple with are not specifically Japanese, but rather cross cultural; pertaining to issues of personal identity, history, and time.”

Risa Sato, Installation view of Risa Campaign in California — Mother’s Life, 1999, mixed-media installation. Photo courtesy of Grey Art Gallery.

Though the concepts may be universal, there is a cultural difference in the way the artists presented their work. Unlike speaking to American artists, who for the most part don’t hesitate to explain their pieces in depth — from conception to execution, the artists at the exhibit seemed a lot more tentative about their ideas. Not to say that their ideas were not as grounded, but simply that they did not seem accustomed to verbally extrapolating on their work. The artists seemed much more at ease discussing their pieces than speaking about the general direction in which they felt contemporary Japanese art was headed.

Educational background seemed to affect the artist’s views and use of medium as well. Those who had formal training at art institutions preferred more “traditional” mediums like painting and sculpture-based performance art over digital media. They also tended toward bleaker views on the direction of Japan and its contemporary art. Others that did not take the well-traveled path of fine art or studio art school, such as Kenji Ueda, a student at a liberal arts university in Yokohama, seemed more adventurous in their choice of subject and medium. Ueda’s piece Paper Game Machine Project 2000 challenged the viewer and mores on art in a direct manner, questioning the traditional role of audience as passive viewer, rather than an active component of the artwork itself.

The strength of this exhibit is the fact that there is no “distinctive Japanese-ness” to any of the pieces shown. It is the use of transcendental topics that give solidarity to the show. It is exciting to see that there are Japanese artists attempting to carve out their own path in the contemporary art scene, even though neither the ideas expressed nor the modes of expression are extraordinarily original.