FICTION FOR THE REAL

"Bathroom"

Apparently the blurry, furry divide between reality on one side and fiction n' fantasy on the other concerns women more than men. At least that seems to be the premise of “Fiction for the Real,” a relatively small exhibition at MoMA, Tokyo, that brings together fourteen works by four cutting-edge female artists – Sophie Calle, Leiko Ikemura, Miwa Yanagi, and Chiharu Shiota.

Each, in her unique way, explores the issue of "identity" and the connected factors of desired, projected, and perceived image.

French conceptual artist Calle sets arbitrary rules for herself, then records the results in pictures and text. As with her offerings here, her work often seems more suited to book form than gallery space.

Leiko Ikemura’s naïve and childlike terracotta figures express the desire and confusion of a middle aged artist who refuses to grow up.

"Elevator Girl House 1F"

Chiharu Shiota’s Bathroom, a monochrome video installation, shows the artist in a bath of mud, ‘washing’ herself with a slow, awkward rhythm. This perverse ritual could have grand political resonances with the way humanity relentlessly pollutes its own environment then wallows in the filth, but in the context of this exhibition, Shiota seems to be awkwardly fighting the male objectification of the female that she has invited herself by presenting her nakedness in her own work.

The theme of projected and assumed roles is also skillfully dealt with in Miwa Yanagi’s photos that ‘employ’ a large group of almost identically dressed and made up elevator girls. Looking at the regimentation and commodification of femininity that is sometimes encountered in modern Japanese consumer society, Yanagi takes a reductio ad absurdum approach.

Her diptych Elevator Girl House 1F, imagines what happens after the department store has closed for the night. Like puppets no longer needed, the elevator girls are shown slumped on a moving pavement that has also been switched off: the role assumed in the daytime has become a horrifying reality in the night.

C.B.Liddell
The Japan Times
3rd May, 2007