Intertwining Narratives: Works from ‘Prism of the Real’ and the M+ Collections

Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989–2010 explores art that emerged in Japan between 1989 and 2010, a critical period in Japanese history, and how Japanese culture inspired the world during this period. Starting from the end of the Shōwa era (1926–1989) and the beginning of Heisei (1989–2019) to 2010, the year before Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, marked the acceleration of globalisation accompanied with the free movement of people and information which had encouraged international dialogue and engagement. Through the curatorial lenses of ‘The Past Is a Phantom’, ‘Self and Others’, and ‘A Promise of Community’, this exhibition presents the view that, during this period, artists in Japan and elsewhere pursued new approaches, acting as prism to refract social and cultural currents and posing diverse questions.

Core to the Prism of the Real is the long-standing tradition of exchange and how Japan historically has always been a diverse and open platform for artistic explorations. This can be traced back to an early stirring of internationalisation since the early 1980s, with 1989 being a critical turning point for the surge of new artistic forms and expressions in responding to socio-political transformation in Japan. Although World War II might be considered a distant past to some, ‘The Past Is a Phantom’ presents the recurrent subjects of war and nuclear power, highlighting how it continues to impact people’s psyches. Evidenced in these works, artists process, rethink, and question histories, offering alternative readings to the conventional singular narrative.

Immediately recognisable for his installations, sculptures, and videos that are based heavily on technology, Miyajima Tatsuo’s (b. 1957, Japan) practice melds art and technology to express deeper emotions and ideas, such as themes of time, the value of life, and the tragedy of war. In Slash (1990), which is featured under the first curatorial lens, red and green digital LED counters are alternatingly arranged on the floor in a diagonal pattern, and numbers from one to nine flash at different speeds. However, the number zero, which to the artist represents finality and emptiness, does not appear and instead the display goes dark. Miyajima continued to further develop his work with similar aesthetics and themes, and a later example, Region No. 43701–No. 43900 (1998), is currently on display at M+ in the exhibition Shanshui: Echoes and Signals. Here, a horizontal grid of digital counters covers the walls of a pitch-dark room, allowing the work to be an immersive experience. Similarly, the number zero is omitted, yet there is still a sense that a seemingly infinite combination of numbers is possible. Mesmerising and meditative, both of Miyajima’s works invoke concepts of life and reincarnation—core concepts in Buddhism—highlighting the endless interconnectivity of the human life cycle through births and deaths and linking numbers with spirituality.

Presented under the same lens is Meiro Koizumi’s 2009 video installation Portrait of a Young Samurai, which was created as a response to the popularity of nationalistic and sentimental war films in Japan during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The work centres around a young kamikaze pilot who bids farewell to his parents. However, after the opening scene, the artist begins to intervene off-screen, and his voice is heard giving increasingly harsh directions to the actor playing the pilot to ‘express more Samurai spirit’, relentlessly repeating his instructions until the actor reaches a turning point in his performance, as if he were brainwashed. Defect in Vision (2011), a similar work in the M+ Collections, is also set during World War II. It similarly features a kamikaze pilot—though older than the young pilot of Portrait of a Young Samurai—sharing a last meal with his wife before he leaves to fight in the war. At the table, the husband talks about the latest developments in the war, whilst the wife repeatedly asks him to return home safely. As their conversation continues, it becomes clear that the pilot and his wife are both blind, an allegory for their obliviousness and unquestioning optimism towards the reality of war. In both works, Koizumi utilises scripted scenes to show the contradictions behind people’s perceptions towards history and the dangers of the romanticisation of war. In the upcoming edition of Avant-Garde Now: Time Travellers, Koizumi will present his VR experience, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer (2023). The VR experience, which draws on the Greek myth of Prometheus, who defied the gods by stealing fire and subsequently sentenced to eternal punishment, allows four users to experience changes brought upon by humankind’s relationship with technology and consider the potential of technology to bring about interconnectedness in our current world.

The critical period between 1989 and 2010 also witnessed artists expand on cultural heritage and tackle the prevailing norms of gender, sexuality, and identity, becoming a fertile soil for international artists. Through her practice which spans photography and video installations to films, Fiona Tan (b. 1966, Indonesia) explores themes such as memory, identity, and narratives of history, often drawing from archival materials. One such work is her photographic installation work, Vox Populi Tokyo (2007), meaning ‘voice of the people’, on display under the curatorial lens ‘Self and Others’. In Vox Populi Tokyo, Tan invites residents to share photographs from family albums with her, of which she collects approximately 300. The photographs, which are then framed and arranged in a grid, are grouped according to different themes and occasions, and feature recognisable scenes of Mount Fuji, Shōwa era express trains to modern day bullet trains, and cherry blossoms in full bloom. While the uniformity of the grid-like display contrasts with the intimacy of each individual photo, it reveals the universal impulse to document everyday life, consciously prompting questions on why we are drawn to these portraits and how we can relate to these ‘strangers’ captured in these photographs. In her other works, Tan also draws upon her experiences for inspiration, taking a more autobiographical lens. In the M+ Collections, May You Live in Interesting Times (1997) is one of Tan’s first long-form video works. The work follows the artist across Europe and Asia as she interviews her relatives, not only tracing her family history as someone raised in Australia, living in Amsterdam, and born to a Chinese Indonesian father and Australian mother, but also investigating the construction of identity. Dealing with themes such as belonging and cultural values, the work also touches upon memory and the legacy of global migration. The work is currently on view at the Mediatheque in the Moving Image Centre at M+.

In the 1990s, there was a global emergence of art practices that dealt with human relations and their social context, and Japan found its form in self-initiated projects that took place outside the museums. ‘A Promise of Community’ features various artist-driven and community-based projects. The relationship that Navin Rawanchaikul (b. 1971, Thailand), who first moved to Fukuoka in 1998, built with local Fukuoka taxi and train drivers for the Hakata Drive-In (1998–2003) allowed him to understand his adopted home’s history and culture. Taxi (or tuk tuk in Thailand) and public transportation are motifs that repeatedly appear in his project in Fukuoka and extends to later projects including his Cities on the Move series. When one takes a taxi ride, one is being driven around the city and exposed to the depth and breadth of a place’s culture, past and present. A series of artistic interventions by various artists in the mid-1990s, including The Ginburart (1993) and Nasubi Gallery (1993), demonstrate the faith and belief in connection as a conduit that can lead to new possibilities for artistic creations and the breaking down of hierarchical relations in both small and significant ways.