Exhibition/event has ended.
"MAM Project 018: Chikako Yamashiro" Exhibition
Mori Art Museum
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Artists
Chikako Yamashiro
Chikako Yamashiro (b. 1976 in Okinawa) uses a variety of media including video and photography to produce works on the theme of her native Okinawa.
In her first video I Like Okinawa Sweet (from OKINAWA TOURIST) (2004), by devouring a famous brand of Okinawan ice cream in front of the US military base, the artist portrays an Okinawa that continues to be “licked,” while in her representative work Seaweed Woman (2008), by giving herself up to the flow of water and weed in the sea off Henoko, planned site for relocation of the US base, she hints at Okinawa's subjugation to the demands of Japan and the United States. Your Voice Came out through My Throat (2009), in which she endeavors to recreate through her own mouth the stories told by an elderly Okinawans who experienced the bloody battle of annihilation on Saipan, could be interpreted as symbolizing the difficulty of passing down history now, over sixty years after the war, but it also overlaps with Okinawa's problem of fading wartime memories.
Thus most of Yamashiro's practice utilizes her own body, serving to symbolize the situation of Okinawa. Still, her works cannot be neatly categorized as simplistic arguments of good and evil; the lyrical quality of her expression allows them to be interpreted in various ways, and in them one finds universal themes such as femininity and physicality, the connection between life and death, memory and storytelling. More recently Yamashiro has begun to shift from performing in her own works to featuring third party subjects, and in this exhibition plans to unveil her latest work on video, an intersection of reality and fiction with a woman who runs a meat shop at a black-market on the US base.
[Image: Chikako Yamashiro, "I Like Okinawa Street (from Okinawa Tourist)" (2004) video, 7 min 30 sec, Courtesy: Yumiko Chiba Associates]
In her first video I Like Okinawa Sweet (from OKINAWA TOURIST) (2004), by devouring a famous brand of Okinawan ice cream in front of the US military base, the artist portrays an Okinawa that continues to be “licked,” while in her representative work Seaweed Woman (2008), by giving herself up to the flow of water and weed in the sea off Henoko, planned site for relocation of the US base, she hints at Okinawa's subjugation to the demands of Japan and the United States. Your Voice Came out through My Throat (2009), in which she endeavors to recreate through her own mouth the stories told by an elderly Okinawans who experienced the bloody battle of annihilation on Saipan, could be interpreted as symbolizing the difficulty of passing down history now, over sixty years after the war, but it also overlaps with Okinawa's problem of fading wartime memories.
Thus most of Yamashiro's practice utilizes her own body, serving to symbolize the situation of Okinawa. Still, her works cannot be neatly categorized as simplistic arguments of good and evil; the lyrical quality of her expression allows them to be interpreted in various ways, and in them one finds universal themes such as femininity and physicality, the connection between life and death, memory and storytelling. More recently Yamashiro has begun to shift from performing in her own works to featuring third party subjects, and in this exhibition plans to unveil her latest work on video, an intersection of reality and fiction with a woman who runs a meat shop at a black-market on the US base.
[Image: Chikako Yamashiro, "I Like Okinawa Street (from Okinawa Tourist)" (2004) video, 7 min 30 sec, Courtesy: Yumiko Chiba Associates]
Schedule | Nov 17 (Sat) 2012-Mar 31 (Sun) 2013 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Adults ¥1500, University and High School Students ¥1000, Children (from 4-year-olds to Junior High School Students) ¥500 | ||||
| Venue | Mori Art Museum https://www.mori.art.museum/eng  | ||||
| Location | 53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo | ||||
| Access | 3 minute walk from exit 1C at Roppongi Station on the Hibiya line, 6 minute walk from exit 3 at Roppongi Station on the Toei Oedo line; From JR Shibuya Station, take the Toei bus and get off at Roppongi Hills. | ||||
| Phone | 050-5541-8600 (Hello Dial) | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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