Narratives of the Body at Roppongi Crossing 2016

     With new discourses come new perspectives. This is what the exhibition Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, My Voice is trying to convey with its wide selection of artworks from photographs to paintings, from music to videos, from machine-like installations to interactive games. The exhibition was first mounted in 2004 at the Mori Art Museum to showcase the works of contemporary Japanese artists, reflecting a vast range of creative techniques. This year, 20 artists selected by curators from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, displayed their works depicting complex relationships between the body and the world around it as told in visual narratives that were distinct and personal. 

       Makoto Aida, one of the participants in the first Roppongi Crossing exhibition in 2004,  noted in a short interview conducted by the Mori Art Museum, that seeing this year’s exhibition gave him the impression that the works contained very personal elements. Participating artists this year tried to explain, through their chosen medium, their answers to the questions, “Who am I? How is my body connected to history and to other people?” Their interpretations of these questions and their corresponding answers reflected a process of looking at the self and projecting the self to the context – time, place, dynamics – of the world where it is placed. 

Katayama Mari, Courtesy of TRAUMARIS, TOKYO

Some artists focused on the relationship between the body and the creation of a distinct identity of the self. Katayama Mari, who had both of her legs amputated at the tender age of nine and has since used prosthetics, displayed her self portraits together with her dolls to represent how she reconciled the idea of who she is as a person and as an artist in relation to her body. Her photos in her room filled with dolls seemed to suggest the objectification of her body as parts of it are joined and rejoined. Through these self-portraits she depicted how the society sees her and with a lifesized doll with a mirror for a face, she depicted how she absorbs the things going on in the society around her.

Goto Yasuka showcased her paintings created with the use of Japanese ink depicting scenes during the Second World War, which she had reimagined based on the stories told by her relatives. Her paintings featured her grandfather who was drafted to war. The paintings showed him writing letters together with other soldiers before they were sent to different places for the war and riding a navy ship about to be deployed in a faraway camp. The very distinct expressions on the faces of the soldiers, which showed their emotions, personalities, worries and fears in the middle of the raging war, were very notable in of her art. One of the most notable pieces of this collection was the Aioi Bashi, which showed a panoramic painting showing her grandfather as a young boy who wanted to enlist in the army facing his adult self who was already drafted to war as a soldier and was facing the horrors of it. 

Yosegaki by Goto Yasuka,
Courtesy of The National Museum of Art Osaka

Hasegawa Ai presented photos showing the projected appearance of the would-be children of a real life same-sex couple if the technology of using Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) became possible and ethically recognized. This technology would allow the children to inherit the genes of both parents even if they are of the same sex. The installation featured photos of the couple with their children happily having breakfast and celebrating a birthday.  

       As this exhibition depicted new ways of presenting the body and the self in relation to time and place, new perspectives were brought into the center to instigate its audience to ponder on them. Aida Makoto referred to the exhibition as interesting because “it makes you realize what you don’t know.” Everyday identities are being invented and reinvented, relationships being established and demolished, and bodies move in a projection of time that transcends ideas and space. With this, reinterpretation of old discourses are strongly encouraged and the formulation of new narratives are more than welcome not only in art, but in everything else, where bodies can be used to communicate to others.

      This exhibition ran at the Mori Art Museum from March 26 to July 10, 2016 and was curated by Natsumi Araki of the Mori Art Museum, Sunjung Kim of the Art Sonje Center, Keisuke Ozawa of the Arts Initiative Tokyo, and Dar-Kuen Wu of the Taipei Artist Village. 

Photos: Grabbed from the website of the Mori Art Museum

1.Flyer/ promotional banner of Roppongi Crossing 2016 

2.you’re mine#001

2014

Katayama Mari

Lambda Print

104.8 X162 cm

Private Collection

Courtesy of: TRAUMARIS, Tokyo

3.Yosegaki 

2008

By Goto Yasuka

Oil, acrylic and Japanese ink on canvas

304 x 480 cm

Collection: The National Museum of Art, Osaka

*** Published in the August 2016 issue of the Filipino-Japanese Journal