TAB Event - Shinobu Akimoto Exhibition

Contemporary art in Japan is strange animal. After living here for going on 5 years I’ve yet to really figure out if it’s ahead of the curve or woefully behind the international art scene. One observation that I’ve gathered is that adequate funding and space are sadly missing from the contemporary art mix. This in conjunction with culturally entrenched notions of Sempai/Kohei relationships and make Japan a very difficult place to exist as a young artist especially one with pretenses to explore a more contemporary and conceptual practice. Perhaps this is why even Japan’s brightest art stars (Nara, Murakami) all continue to adhere to a more conservative tradition of object making – one, after all, needs something to sell and the best way to do that is to establish a style (brand?) to be recognized by.

This is not to suggest that there is a deficit of creativity in Japan, indeed much of what passes for contemporary art here runs the risk of almost being up staged by the activities of those who decidedly remain outside the sphere of the art world. Those co-play kids in Harajuku for example, or the otaku ethic of some corporations who set themselves to designing robots that can play the trumpet or ride bicycles. Moreover in a country where space is a premium, creativity becomes a lifestyle necessity just to exist somewhat sanely in Tokyo-size apartment. I thought about these ideas as I wondered through Japanese/Canadian artist Shinobu Akimoto’s current exhibition now up at the Canadian Embassy in Aoyama. Akimoto has occupied herself the last 10 years or so with clever and witty projects that explore this intersection between lifestyle and creativity, a number of which are on display here and that beg the question of what, if anything demarcates and reifies “art” apart from all other types of creative endeavour.

You’d be forgiven for assuming upon first glance that she was primarily interested in pets or that she harbours that particularly Japanese preoccupation with all things fuzzy and cute for its true Animals are a prominent theme in this show. In the video Some Go To School She documents the daily comings and goings of animals. “Some go to school…some don’t…some have a job…etc., In Better Living she gives us a series of photographs and another video of her pet animals, hanging out in her backyard, or going “shopping” at a miniature lifestyle store. In a separate work, part of The House Rabbit Society Project Series, she shows us a number of meticulously printed photo etchings, reproductions of classified ads promoting the health and well being of pet rabbits. Next to this are several zip-lock bags full of tiny white knitted bunny finger puppets. A fourth project consists of equally meticulous photo-litho reproductions of ads for pet accessories. But there is something more going on here.

Much of the work emulates other existing objects or activities from the everyday. In quoting these odd discoveries from the world beyond art, Akimoto encourages us to rethink what it is to call oneself an artist, or not, and what role does creativity necessarily play in peoples lives? The quirky, enigmatic quality of the tiny text based prints could easily have been mistaken as art, standing out eclectically as they would in their original context as ads in the back of some newspaper. Akimoto seizes upon this absurdity and reclaims the ads as “art’ by bringing them into the a gallery and through her time consuming reproduction in such a traditional media as integlio printmaking. Likewise the hundreds of tiny finger puppets, commissioned by the artist and hand knitted by a member of the same said House Rabbit Society that placed the original ads would not be out of character as the production of someone working as a contemporary artist rather than a fundraiser. This reclamation of the ordinary (or extraordinary) from everyday life is also evident in the beautifully presented photos of her pet animals where much of the tiny furniture props were either bought or re-crafted from dollar store miniatures. Moreover, the inherent creativity found in even such banal decisions or activities as choosing how we decorate our homes or even how we kill time on a lazy afternoon are alluded to in this work as the animals, apparently bored just spending their day hanging around the garden, have decided to go shopping. This common tendency towards creativity is even echoed in Akimoto’s choice of media. Despite the seductiveness of her large plexi-mounted prints, her Better Living project remains decidedly on the lo-tech side and in that sense is representative of the universal and contemporary phenomenon of people documenting their lives/children/pets etc. with shaky hand held home video or fuzzy slightly out of focus snapshots. Perhaps Akimoto herself, is just killing time or seeking a means to enjoyment from her daily life. And perhaps she is right that everyone makes something even if it’s just a decision about how we live. Some like herself, decide to file it under art; and some don’t.