TAB Event - "Kazari: The Impulse to Decorate in Japan" Exhibition

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At Suntory Museum of Art
Media: Painting, Crafts, Ceramics, Other

Since prehistoric times the Japanese have employed kazari (the act of adorning) with great enthusiasm and to great effect in all aspects of daily life, from clothes to periodic festivals and ritual ceremonies conducted before battles. Kazari provided a sort of transformative medium during festival periods through which ordinary space and the mundane world was temporarily transformed into something extraordinary and sacred. The act of kazaru (adorning) momentarily lifted one's spirits from the everyday realm and offered a tantalising glimpse of the exotic pleasures that lay beyond those designated by strict boundaries of status and class. Efforts to adorn (kazaru) at times reveal a surprising disregard for practicality, but have proven to be a profound motivating force in Japanese culture.
This exhibition explores the multifarious nature of kazari, which in a sense lies at the origin of Japanese culture. Kazari is present both in prehistoric Jômon ceramics and in contemporary art. It is alive in the fields of painting, craft, performance art, and the kazari of elegance (furyû), which can be viewed in festivals. We are delighted to be able to present to you the timeless world of kazari, where functionality, beauty, the sacred and the secular collide to forming an unexpected unity.

[Image: Jôruri monogatari handscroll, third scroll, attributed to Iwasa Matabei Katsumochi, Edo period
MOA Museum of Art]

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