Dissertation
The fantasy dream of traveler in the wonderful land.
“Alice and Ambivalence”
Matthanee Nilavongse
Master degree
The girl has been studying art since 1995. Her life changed when she grew up she couldn’t do just art work anymore, she had her own child and family work to do things to worry baby sitter, waitress, cleaner, telesales, translator, and social worker. The whimsical nature of the Alice themed land inspired her profoundly, ever since seeing the film when she was five years old the story has stayed with her. When she embarked on the adventure of moving to England she couldn’t help but draw parallels to Alice falling through the rabbit hole and down into wonderland. Everything was so different.
Identity ! sometimes it makes her head ache sometimes her heart. She has her Thai passport, her Thai identity card, she have her student i.d card, her birth certificate she have all the necessary papers from the U.K. Border Agency and Home Office. All of which confirm her status as a citizen of Thailand who can temporarily live and be student in Britain. What more does she need to know, what’s the problem? The problem is of course her legal status does not feel as though It has anything much to do with her sense of self. They tell her what she is not who she is. They don’t tell her what it means to be a 21st century woman from Thailand in 21st century Britain?" Like the story of Alice, her art practice has been a journey, Alice’s was through a Wonderland where she constantly has to answer the question ‘who are you’.
Two years ago the girl started her new journey into art practice, like Alice, she dropped down another hole into a new world - the knowledge of art. For the first time she experienced the feeling of discovering herself, her own feelings and confusion about sexual, culture, male gaze, racial issue. At the end the Cheshire cat told her its called “Ambivalence”
2009
I come from Thailand, the land of sex as the European stereotype would suggest, but also Thailand is a Buddhist country with strict cultural rules about the role of women and how they should act in public. So my own art work explores themes of display and consumerism in relation to my identity as a Thai woman observing British culture.
My work as a waitress (in Thai dress) in a Thai restaurant was the catalyst which made me think and develop my art-practice around the questions of my personal and cultural identity. The restaurant is a ‘trope’ of the 21st century entertainment and leisure industries. It is not longer just a place where food and drink is consumed, but as a complete package for the customer, as an ‘experience’. Businesses such as Thai restaurants with their statues etc represent an “ethnic” identity by offering up what they feel their customers wants or expects. This summons up various cultural images for people, even though they may never have been to Thailand before in their lives. Restaurant owners manufacture a cultural product by accommodating and perpetuating certain stereotypes - in a sense “serving up” not just food but notions of an ethnic or exotic “others” based on folklore, nostalgia and myth.
For example the ‘greeting’ statue found in nearly every Thai restaurant in Western countries is simply a mass-produced commercial object. However the statue’s pose and dress has become synonymous with Thai culture and Thai food. The statue clothed in Thai national dress implies a national tradition of the female being conservative, submissive, compliant, and backward-looking when in fact this woman in particular and the majority of contemporary Thai women are firmly rooted in the 21st century. (see picture)
‘Greeting statue – not me.’
Ambivalence, ambivalence! Questions, questions! I am a 21st century woman who needs to earn a wage but am I being complicit in perpetuating an illusory cultural identity? Has my ethnicity in 21st century Britain reduced my status to that of a commodity? Just as Alice’s journey through Wonderland is a metaphorical journey during which she has to encounter questions about, and ultimately assert her own identity, I needed to do the same. My own sense of self, both as an individual and as an individual experiencing a profound sense of ‘being somewhere’ at the same time experiencing a sense of ‘not being there’ were two themes I explored and articulated in my exhibition.
The Thai Restaurant provides a backdrop for my art-practice. I wanted to assert my sexuality as a woman and articulate a sense of dislocation. As a woman I sensed my status had been reduced to that of commodity, not simply a waitress but a participant in an illusory cultural consumer led cultural experience. This in turn was over- laid with an acute awareness of western perceptions of the compliant ‘china-doll’[1], Thai sex-worker or the ‘Thai-bride stereotype.
I used a photo montage where I juxtaposed three traditional western ‘belles’, whose poses were dynamic as opposed to passive, against the background of a Thai restaurant. They are ‘out of place’ in the same way I as a modern Thai woman felt out of place as a participant in an illusory cultural ‘experience’. My own sense of worth was being diminished by customers’ references to me as ‘the girl in the pink dress’, no attempt being made to establish a personal relationship. I had become part of restaurant fittings, a commodity, less interesting than the menu, de-personalized, part of someone else’s ‘experience’. I included a photograph of myself wearing a party hat and traditional Thai dress, sardonically surveying to articulate the sense of ‘being there’ but at the same time dislocated. (See picture)
I wanted to assert and articulate my own sense of personal identity and confront my perception of being reduced to a commodity in other peoples consumer ‘experience’. Again I used a photo montage. I superimposed an enlarged photo of my crouched naked body in a restaurant. I am naked, unadorned by any cultural garments, I am not participating in an illusory experience, I purposefully used an over-size image of myself to provoke the viewer to see me as a person, more than a commodity. (See picture).
The decision to use my naked body was instinctive. I could not qualify or define the reason, I simply ‘felt’ that an image of my naked body was the best medium to demand the viewer saw me as a person, as an individual, my gender was incidental. It was simply about being a naked person as opposed to being a naked woman. My body in the picture is crouched; I am not displaying any overtly visible indications of my gender. Simultaneously I am denying access to my inner self, attempting to block the ‘male gaze’. Like the blank expression on the greeting statue I wanted to provoke the question what lies behind, who is this person? What is this person thinking? What are their opinions? However after the exhibition many people asked me why did I have to use my naked body in my art work?
Whilst using my naked body ‘felt right’ I needed to know more about the reasons why it felt so right, I needed to academically qualify my instincts. I had also seen the poster:-
The poster was very thought-provoking; does a female artist have to use her naked body for her work to be recognized? And how does she use her body as a medium to function in a different way than simply being pornography?
I wanted to resolve this feeling of uncertainty so I researched “How and why do female artists use their naked bodies in contemporary art practice?” I looked at the works of Orlan,Hannah Wilkie, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Saville, Nan Goldin, Natacha Merritt, Ghada Amer, Helen Chadwick, Yoko Ono, Tracy Emin, Helen Chadwick. These are women artists who have attempted to take control of the way they are represented as women, by using and re-imagining dominant cultural norms.
I focused on the work of Ghada Amer (an Egyptian) and Natacha Merritt (a New Yorker), because they were from diametrically different cultures and deal with nudity in different ways. For Amer, she is trying to take control of a culture that enforces secrecy and seclusion, Merritt was trying to take control of a culture enforcing exposure, no culture, no veil.
Ghada Amer Natacha Merritt
I felt an affinity with their work and what I was trying to express through my art practice. In particular the artist’s cultural origins and gender being determining factors in the consideration of their art. Amer challenges the stereotypes about passive Muslim women, Merritt is more about self-exploration.
They underline the fact that there are no longer any binary boundaries that enclose art or the artist. This is the art of the cultural ‘hybrid’; it is beyond creeds, beyond cultures. Amer’s work is a feminised and abstracted mass of lines which on closer inspection become erotic female figures, in contrast to Merritt’s more graphic technique.
Why is it significant that I and Ghada portray ourselves naked? I would suggest that Ghada seeks to assert her identity as a woman by presenting and displaying herself as a naked woman from a culture where public displays of female nudity and issues of female sexuality are extremely taboo. However, as an artist she seems to be taking control of her own self-representation, and challenging the cultural norms that try to suppress female sexuality. She presents an image of women experiencing their own sexuality and pleasure in the absence of men – asserting their independence and their right to self expression.
The two women artists I have chose have different styles. Amer uses embroidery, a distinctly feminine activity. Her female models celebrate a private, domestic exploration of female sexuality, a sensuality echoed in and linked to the rich textures of female craft or domestic tasks. Merritt uses digital photography to produce extremely intimate graphic images of herself and friends as a form of self exploration.
So I learned how the representation of visual of art can give a totally different perception to the viewer. I began to appreciate that the content of my art practice needed to have more layers, more depth, more use of semiotics.
Following my research into female nudity in 2010 I started to develop my art-practice using images of my naked body, still using the restaurant, but putting my body in different poses. (See picture)
But the result is very dull as it’s just like ordinary advert, it hasn’t got an aesthetic layer. The creative edge is missing; the picture has no reference point for the viewer.
So I tried a different medium using an object, pillow, luggage (See picture)
I was trying to show a journey, a dream, pressure of being unable to escape from a cultural illusion, from stereotypes, from being a commodity. However I felt the visual image was too confused, too many symbols and metaphors in one piece of art. The harder I tried the less I achieved. I only had two years, and had to re-focus, re-define. The problem I had was the best medium to use that quickly encapsulated my daily experience of life. I tried photography.
In the first year I also used my body as a fetish, [see two pictures below)
I understood and accepted the validity of the criticism that from the viewer’s perspective we are already in an ironic culture, we can see irony all the time in adverts, sit-coms and films. Naked bodies can be seen everywhere so what‘s unique or different about these particular images, what are you trying to say about your inner sense? The photo-montages I produced were too artificial; they lacked depth and didn’t challenge or confront the viewer.
Like Merritt I had used digital photographs, however her images are almost pornographic, which was an impression I was trying to avoid with its associations with female exploitation and commodification of the female body. Merritt takes instant graphic photographs of herself, almost narcissistic, totally unlike Amer’s subtle use of embroidery. However after some experimentation I realized I did not have the time or skill to use Amer’s medium. However I felt I could still use photography to capture a wide range of contexts and subjects to convey the sense of ambivalence and stereotyping I still felt.
By this time I had a better sense of my sexuality and cultural identity as a Thai woman in British society to the point I was confident enough to make criticisms and comments through my art practice. Using the metaphor of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I portrayed myself as Alice and the tropes of British culture to convey a sense of my journey and experiences in the Wonderland I perceived were the norms of 21st century British social culture. Like Alice I was trying to answer the question ‘who are you?’ and like Alice at the end of the story to positively assert herself. However whilst the metaphor and the medium worked, what I was trying to convey still had the potential for further development.
Method and Practice
I used five different British-born photographers to take images of me in different poses, contexts and locations. The first series of photographs were a co-operative venture between what I as the artist was trying to convey – 21st century British social perceptions of a Thai woman, and the photographer’s interest in rope art and Asian girl. However it seemed to be that the photographer was influenced by the Japanese artist Araki Nobuyoshi (see end note). However I did find an aesthetic quality in the images, some of them reminded me of Edgar Degas paintings.(see end note) This in turn gave me the idea I could use images from more classical paintings as a trope to articulate my sense of ambivalence.
In the second series of photographs I used ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as the main theme. Whilst accepting it was not a ‘classical painting’ it was a classical piece of English literature from a time of ‘high culture’, and one which had a profound influence on me since childhood. I portrayed myself as ‘Alice’ as a metaphor for the Thai woman in contemporary British society. The result was that the metaphor produced some very powerful images. However the images didn’t totally articulate my concept. As a metaphor for ambivalence the images worked but didn’t capture my sense that my identity and status as Thai woman was being diminished to that of a ‘commodity’ by contemporary perceptions formed by illusory cultural experiences and issues of ‘Thai brides’ and ‘sex workers’.
In the third series the images were quite direct. I was articulating the concept that I was perceived as a poorly paid immigrant, or a commodity whose status in Britain nothing more than to “serve up” notions of an ethnic or exotic “other” culture. This was also a reference back to some of my earlier art-practice.
The fourth series was similar. However the images of me as a ‘Thai bride’ were a reference to perceptions that Thai women were ‘purchased’, or allowed themselves to be ‘purchased’ thereby diminishing their dignity, status and identity to that of a ‘servant’ to acquire citizenship. In the third and fourth series I also discovered something new - how western men perceived the vulnerability of the oriental female, which surprised me, but also I felt I was surrendering control of my own art practice because the composition of the image, what was included, what was left out, was always in the hands of a third party. Also the images were too direct, too ironic. In retrospect they were parochial, insular and ‘Thai-centric’, it was my view of how I, as a Thai-immigrant, only working and living with other Thais, thought Thai women were being perceived by their ‘host’ society.
However the fifth series entitled ‘dark skin cream’ represents an epiphany in my art practice. In this series I am looking at myself in a mirror wearing dark skin creams because I want to see how different I look. It was a satirical comment on how western women want to look dark tanned and eastern women wants to look pale. In my previous art-practice the pivotal concept was how I believed as a Thai woman I was being stereotyped in British society. The paradox is that both cultures are altering how they are seen by the other, everyone in fact are becoming willing participants, ‘hybrids’, in an illusory cultural experience.
Wonderland Shop
In my final work I used multiple methods of displaying visual images as I was confident they were the best method to articulate the main concept I had distilled from all my previous art-practice – we are all ‘hybrids’ in a ‘wonderland’ of our own making.
I created a ‘wonderland shop’; it’s an ‘up-side’ down world of identities. The exterior is a western stereotypical image of an oriental fast-food outlet. Upon entering there are objects synonymous with the take-away, television on the counter, video, magazines to read whilst you wait, take-away brown paper bags, pictures and certificates on the wall and prawn crackers.
For example I included the television as a satirical comment. In a fast-food outlet the far-eastern workers behind the counter are always watching videos from their own cultures, videos that the western customers cannot understand. In my Wonderland Shop the television on the counter is showing the customer the life of the immigrant kitchen worker, a life whose economic motivation the western customer cannot understand. (see picture)
Magazine
The magazine is a compilation of all five series of photographs. It is on the counter of the fast-food outlet for the customer. The images were non-commercial working encounters with a series of British-born male photographers. We met as artists and strangers. The photographers didn’t know me and had no knowledge of my day-to-day life. To them I was an anonymous Thai woman working on an art project.
The magazine’s artwork is the story of a Thai woman’s journey through contemporary British social and cultural life. I combine performance and documentation to disrupt traditional English narratives; locating myself as a curious, unsettled subject/object in these re-imagined stories. Initially there is resistance to stereotyping of Thai women as sexual or commercialized objects. (see picture)
In the Thai restaurant the waitress is a blank, anonymous bearer of a cultural experience; deferential, passive, child-like, submissive. The fifth-series at the end of the book, the ‘dark skin cream’ images is the realisation that we not stereotypes we are all cultural ‘hybrids’
Video projector
“Blond is western’s society’s iconographic object of desire; both real and imagined it reveals the modern day acceptable face of contemporary fetish. It conjures up unimaginable visions of transient beauty, love, sexual availability, fun, fascination and envy.”[3]
The concept of using the video projector came from the fifth series of photographs. I was influenced by a series of two works by Joy Gregory ‘The Fairest’ (1998) a film which probed individuals desire to be blonde, and ‘Bottled Blonde’ (1998) which looked at notions of aesthetics, beauty, gender and race. Both said something about our need to sometimes be someone other than ourselves.
The projector will be hidden under the counter and project an image onto the wall behind and below the counter, below the normal eye level of customers. The projected image is in that position, so that customers will have to make an effort to see them. I want the viewer to be intrigued and curious to look behind and beyond the counter. The video shows me as a Thai woman with blonde hair dying my hair black and applying dark skin cream. The point is that neither the western or eastern woman are stereotypes, both are ‘hybrids’, neither are passive or differential, both are capable of making their own life choices, and how they choose to be seen.
.\
My Wonderland has been contemporary Britain. The ever-insular cultural Britain I conceived in my childhood is now trying to come to terms with the cultural challenges of migrant communities, ‘multi-culturalism’, multi-racialism, the ambivalence inherent in new concepts of ‘British-ness’ and ‘Europeanization’. Thailand too is a place of ‘hybrid cultures’ e.g. conservative cultural values coming to terms with ‘globalisation’, mass consumerism and the impact of Western tourism. Thailand, like the UK, is saturated with media images and marketing campaigns which are all about identity. It is difficult to discover and claim your identity when you cross continents and cultures, and when you live surrounded by images of identity that are unreal and illusory.
My art-practice, like Alice’s journey, is one where in a milieu of cultural and ambivalence I have had to ask myself the questions ‘where are you really from?’, ‘what are you really?’ how am I being represented?
Therefore the paradigm which has run through all my art-practice has been one around questions of cultural identity and my own cultural and personal identity in particular. I wanted to ask the question when you look at me, who or what do you see? Are contemporary notions of social and cultural identity any longer valid?, which in turn led me to the question or ‘new’ individuals emerging, not so much ‘cosmopolitans’, more ‘hybrids?’.
The term’ hybridity’ started life as a biological term, used to describe the outcome of crossing two plants or species. It now a term for a wide range of social and cultural phenomena involving ‘mixing’ and has become a concept within cultural criticism. It is associated with the critical social theory of Homi Bhabha, who would have current notions of ‘culture’ are fluid and unstable. He questions the modern ‘many as one’ approach to social cohesion which has treated social expressions of gender or ethnicity as expressive of the collective experience.
Bhabha argues modern societies are increasing becoming integrated and, as this occurs their members are mixing their unique cultural attributes with one another blurring the distinctions that once defined individual cultures. To focus on those moments or processes produced in the articulation of cultural differences creates ‘in-between spaces’. Also referred to as the concept of ‘third space’ they are metaphors for the space in which cultures met. In these spaces opportunities exist to articulate cultural differences are made. These ‘in-between’ spaces is where and when ‘new signs of identity’ and ‘new cultures’ are created, from the perspective of ‘cultures in between’ (Bhabha, 1996). ‘Culture’ used in the sense of the way how society lives, a culture which is a ‘hybrid’ of two different or opposing cultures.
Academically I was unaware of Bhabha’s ‘third-space’ or ‘in-between spaces’ (1996) per se , however I found a resonance in his paradigm and what I had intuitively been trying to articulate in my art practice – initially a profound sense of ambivalence. What did it mean to be a contemporary woman from Thailand in contemporary British society?
The exploitation of this ‘sense’ of ambivalence raised a critical self consciousness expressed through my art practice and came from a need to question my position in the world and in particular contemporary British society, questions of perceptions and identity in the interaction between two cultures, the connection between my life and that of others. Whilst not being discursively aware of ‘in between or third spaces’ I believe intuitively I have created a ‘third space’ in my art practice. I would argue an allusion to Bhabha’s third space and mine is sustainable. It is a space ‘in between’ where I have not asserted the dominance of either eastern or western cultural identities and it is the perspective of a ‘hybrid’.
However at the heart of my art-practice I wanted my initial sense of ambivalence to be the creative edge where I wanted to engage with the viewer and later the point that neither western or eastern woman are stereotypes, both are ‘hybrids’, both capable of making their own life choices, and how they choose to be seen. If I apply Bhabha’s theory to my artwork it follows that its message does not lie within the discourse of the artist nor the discourse of the viewer but somewhere ‘in between’, on the edges of the artwork as the joint boundary. I want my art-practice to be a space where people can dialogue across the differences, add, delete or change their existing thoughts.
I am grateful that Bhabha like the lizard in ‘Alice’ came along to explain why I simultaneously felt ‘here’ but at the same time ‘not here’ However I do not want to overstate the case for his paradigm. In its general outlines, the concepts of ‘hybridity’ and ‘in-between cultures’ has enormous appeal – I want to believe it. However I have reservations about using my art-practice to validate a social theory or vice-versa as this can lead to the ‘commodification’ of art. The ‘in-between’ can also become problematical if it makes the meaning of ambivalent art-practice not ambivalent any more.
However I believe my art-practice shows there can be ‘spaces’ in which the artist can knowingly, and purposefully, reframe the relationship between ‘their lives’, and ‘others lives’ in a way that confronts and creates the possibility for critical engagement with two different but simultaneously articulated terms ‘ourselves’ and ‘themselves’. Insulating art from this discourse seems to be an act of self-censorship because art must reflect our lived lives.
Perhaps Bhabha is and never was the answer exactly, and I’m not unhappy with that conclusion. For me, art and my art-practice is about my lived life. It has been and continues to be a journey through the ‘Wonderland’ of my lived life - my life with its feelings of ambivalence, illusory cultural experiences, self-assertion, identity, how I see myself, others, and the world about me. It has helped me to articulate the big question we all ask ourselves from time to time – I know who I am, but how do I capture the actual experience I have of being the unique person I call me? It’s such an exciting journey of exploration, I wouldn’t call it art I would call it pictures from my mind.
`
End note
Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006
NOBUYOSHI ARAKI
Intimate photography: Tokyo, nostalgia and sex
By C.B. LIDDELL
Special to The Japan Times
Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki's work start by pointing out the contradictions "monster," "genius," "pornographer," "artist," etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo's ancient past or Tokyo's modern sexual underworld.
View from a cemetery of the construction on Roppongi Hills (2000; above); High school students returning home in the afternoon (1997; below) PHOTOS COURTESY OF TOKYO-EDO MUSEUM
But this kind of moralistic approach doesn't quite fit a subject like Araki, who is more a force of nature, existing, in some Nietzschean space beyond good and evil, or at least "good and evil" as defined by middle-class Western journalists like Adrian Searle in The Guardian. In a review of the show "Nobuyoshi Araki: Self, Life, Death," at London's Barbican last year, Searle slyly hinted that Araki's depictions of women placed him beyond the pale of some liberal leftwing acceptability, before trying to find some level on which he could be "redeemed.''
Araki's present book and show, "Tokyo Jinsei," covers much of the same ground as the Barbican show with a similar 40-year-plus range, although, typically, the "pornographic" element has been watered down for a Japanese audience.
While moral concerns are always going to surface among those keen to damn his work, they are less helpful for those wishing to develop a true understanding of his frantic photographic framing and capturing of Tokyo's unique energy. With such a variety of subject matter, formal concepts are also useless. This leaves just one device that is the key to all Araki's art -- Araki himself. Looking at the people in the photographs -- and even the scenery -- we see the chemistry of their reaction to the cheerful, relentless, comical ball of energy that is Araki.
Why are you calling this book and exhibition "Tokyo Jinsei"?
I was born and bred in Tokyo. Almost my whole life has been lived here. Tokyo is my mother. It is my womb. I still have a kind of lingering attachment.
This implies a kind of childishness, like you haven't grown up yet.
Yes, just by looking at me you can understand that!
My first impression was that you looked like someone who worked in a circus. I think your appearance is very important for taking photographs -- you can be very intrusive and maybe even rude with the camera, but people will forgive you because your appearance makes them smile.
But it's not calculated. This is just my natural style. Although when I take photographs, I try to dress to fit the occasion. It is very important to suit the object or the person. For example, when I photograph in Shinjuku, I wear jeans, a T-shirt and sports shoes; but when I go to Ginza, I usually wear a suit. I change my costume depending on where I'm taking pictures. If the person I'm photographing is naked, then I, too, will be naked -- a naked photographer!
Araki's 2004 photograph series of Minori Miyata is emblematic of his celebration of beauty and transience. Miyata, a tanka poet who died from breast cancer a year later, contributed poems to Araki's photobook of her.
How does it help to make such a picture better if you too are naked?
Why are you even asking!? When two people make love, both people have to be naked. This is exactly the same thing.
In other words, taking a picture of a naked woman is the same as making love?
Yes, "naked love," that sounds good, doesn't it? "Naked love" -- yes, I like that.
Tokyo is not the most beautiful city in the world. Why do you focus on it?
Photographing a city that is not my own is bothersome. To be honest, I don't have any interest in any city besides Tokyo. The most important thing for me is to take pictures of the people I love the most and the city I love the most, and that's Tokyo. Before, I tried taking pictures in Paris and New York, but actually I'm not interested in other cities because I love Tokyo. I went to the Barbican in London last year for an exhibition, but even if I go to London or Paris, I don't take pictures of Paris or London. I can only take a picture of something in Paris or London, I can't take a picture of Paris or London.
By focusing on Tokyo over 44 years, your book and exhibition reflect Tokyo's constantly changing fashions, styles, architecture, and even the body language of the people. Isn't the effect of all this simply to create a great nostalgia trip?
In a way, I guess so. People say photography should try to avoid being nostalgic, but I simply say photographs are nostalgic. The meaning of nostalgia for me is not sad memories or something that has disappeared; not just memories. For me nostalgia is like the warmth in a mother's belly.
That's like staying close to the womb, both in space or time. You stay in the same place, Tokyo, and by embracing the nostalgia of photographs you attempt to stay in the same temporal space.
If you say that, it sounds too concrete. It includes that, but not so concretely. I would use the term "transmigration" or the "wheel of life" to describe it.
It's very interesting that you have such nostalgia and attachment to place in Tokyo, because Tokyo has as much permanence as a Bedouin encampment. Every few years everything is knocked down and rebuilt, like Roppongi Hills. Your attitude is like someone clinging onto a rock during a storm at sea.
But that's what Tokyo is. The movement and change are what makes it. If it didn't change it wouldn't be any good at all. It means the city is alive. Anyway, I feel it's not changing at all. It's simply moving! This is what makes Tokyo very attractive. This is why I can't leave it.
Does that create problems for you as a photographer? The old Tokyo with its ramshackle appearance seems easier to take interesting photographs of than the new glass and concrete. If it becomes too modern, does it become more difficult to photograph?
There's nothing that is difficult for me to photograph! Everything is attractive. For example women, if they are beautiful, of course that's attractive, but, even if they are ugly, they are attractive for me.
A good example is the picture of Minori Miyata in the exhibition, the beautiful tanka poet who later died from breast cancer. She had an ugly scar where her left breast had been. That somehow made the image all the more beautiful.
When I took this picture, I wasn't trying to make her look beautiful. It wasn't to solve any problem. There is no conclusion. It's completely open. It doesn't go anywhere.
It's very intimate in a way that a lot of sexual pictures aren't. Why did she ask you or allow you to take the picture?
Because she loved me, because I am the greatest photographer in Japan! What's important in my work is always the relationship between me and the object -- it's a kind of love story. I don't concern myself with why a relationship starts or where it goes. The most important thing is just the relationship between the two of us at that moment. This world becomes our world.
In the case of this picture of Minori Miyata, if you had pushed the button one or two seconds later, would it have been a very different photograph?
Yes, because the time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it's like a sexual encounter. It's like a f**k! So, timing is very important.
When you take a picture, what is it that makes you push the button?
It must be kami (god). What makes a photographer take a picture? What makes an artist paint a picture? It can't really be explained. It's a kind of instinct or impulse.
But you must take thousands of pictures that you simply discard.
If you consider that I have published 357 books of photos, I almost don't throw any pictures away. Soon I will be producing a book of my best photos, but every photo is great and wonderful, so I can't throw any away. Taking pictures is a lot like sexual foreplay. Even though sex ends in an orgasm, it is not just a f**k. A lot of my pictures are foreplay but the best ones are orgasms.
Nobuyoshi Araki's "Tokyo Jinsei" runs till Dec. 24 at the Edo-Tokyo Museum; open 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. (closed Mon.). For more information call (03) 3626-9974 or visit www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
France 1834-1917
Trois danseuses à la classe de danse (Three dancers at a dancing class)
c.1888-90
Oil on cardboard
50.5 x 60.6cm
Purchased 1959 with funds donated by Major Harold de Vahl Rubin
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Edgar Degas
Trois danseuses à la classe de danse (Three dancers at a dancing class) c.1888-90
Edgar Degas has traditionally been associated with the Impressionists, whose work focused on new ways of recording modern life. The Impressionist movement consisted of about 20 rebel artists who endeavoured to change some of the entrenched conventions of nineteenth-century French art by adopting new techniques and subjects.
They attempted to capture the initial visual sensation or impression of a scene, often working outdoors (en plein air) on small canvases. The Impressionists worked with oil paint in a quick sketchy fashion to record the optical effects of light and colour of a particular scene.
Like many artists of his day, Degas looked to the leisure activities of the French middle-class for his subjects. Ballet classes were a favourite, providing ample opportunity for Degas to study the human body in poses ranging from intense activity to rest.
He was also a keen amateur photographer and many of his seemingly instantaneous and arbitrary compositions were influenced by his view through the photographic lens. In his later years he turned largely to sculpture, maintaining his curiosity about the human form.
Trois danseuses à la classe de danse (Three dancers at a dancing class) c.1888-90 depicts the work of a dancer. It is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the fatigue and strain that characterise the strenuous regime of practice, rehearsal and performance. While it is a study of the human form, the work is also a poetic depiction of filtered light ― a favourite theme of the Impressionists.
http://qag.qld.gov.au/collection/international_art/edgar_degas
Joy Gregory
The Fairest 1998
Duration – 22 minutes
Joy Gregory’s film uncovers and probes eleven very different individuals’ desire to be blonde. Asking a set of simple questions, such as why did you choose to be Blonde?, what is your earliest memory of someone Blonde?. This work uses the state of blonde as a way of describing notions of shifting identities.
Shot in 1998, a couple of years before the onset of Big Brother and the explosion of reality TV, this work presents, through simple talking heads and close up of lips, a time of innocence, whilst revealing through the interviewees unguarded moments and naked honesty our need to sometimes be someone other than ourselves.
Previously unseen and shot using analogue methodologies and equipment (which were the only ones available in 1998), The Fairest has been specially digitally re-mastered and edited for this exhibition.
The Fairest is dedicated to the memory of Paulita Sedgewick (1943 to 2009).
Bottled Blonde 1998
“The soft golden halo of blonde hair indicates an innocence, which has a limited life in a new century already savaged by senseless global wars, hunger and catastrophic health crisis. Beyond that small window of early childhood, innocence exists only in memory and in fairy tales – as indeed does the real platinum blonde beyond the age of twelve.
Blond is western’s society’s iconographic object of desire; both real and imagined it reveals the modern day acceptable face of contemporary fetish. It conjures up unimaginable visions of transient beauty, love, sexual availability, fun, fascination and envy.” Joy Gregory 2008
Bottled Blonde is a sculpture based on photographic methodology. It consists of medical sample bottles filled with dyed blonde hair donated by peoples from different racial - African, Asian, European - backgrounds. The work’s sculptural qualities are connected to photography, as each individual lock of hair has been dyed and toned blonde in a laboratory setting based on the timings and methods used within a photography darkroom. Like much of Gregory’s work Bottled Blonde looks at notions of aesthetics, beauty, gender and race.
Bibliography
C.B Liddell, The Japan Times, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20061123a1.html, consulted 20/08/2011
Grant Pooke&Diana Newall, Art History the basics, Routhledge, 2008
Guerrilla Girls. Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls. New York: HarperCollins, Inc., 1995
Homi k.Bhaba,the location of culture, Routledge, 1994
Homi k.Bhaba, Question of cultural identity, SAGE Publications, 1996
Joy Gregory, Lost Languages and other voices Exhibition Guide, Impression Gallery 2010
Lewis Carroll (1866) Alice Adventures in Wonderland, Macmillan & Co Ltd.
Sheridan Prasso (2005) Asian Mystique, Cambridge MA, Public Affairs/Perseus Books
Uta Grosenick, “Women Artist”, It’s a women’s world, Taschen, 2001
Thank you
Mike Edwards
Heptonstall
[1] According to author Sheridan Prasso (2005, 74-105) the “China Porcelain doll” stereotype and other variations of this submissive stereotype exist in American films. This includes the "Geisha Girl, Lotus Flower, China Doll: submissive, docile, obedient, reverential.
[2] Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
