BODY/PLAY/POLITICS

The Yokohama Museum of Art is proud to present BODY/PLAY/POLITICS from Saturday, October 1 to Wednesday, December 14, 2016.

BODY/PLAY/POLITICS presents contemporary works of art that delve from a variety of angles into images that have been generated throughout history by “the body,” which encompasses the individual human body, our collective actions, and spiritual presences. There is a tendency in our society to label specific bodies as healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or ugly, and to envision certain modes of behavior as representative of the entire group, which we classify such as “typically Japanese.” In other cases, minor deviations from norms or expectations can elicit strange feelings in observers and cause entirely different meanings to be perceived.

In a world cohabited by people with all sorts of skin colors, ethnicities, religions, gender norms and lifestyles, where the colors, forms, or behaviors of individual bodies are not inherently vested with specific meanings, over the course of millennia many value judgments and hierarchies have arisen in societies and are all too often linked to tragedies of history.

The six artists featured in this exhibition are from Europe/ Africa, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Their works express, in poetic and sometimes humor-inflected ways, aspects of history that manifest themselves through the body, looking toward the future and bringing the shapes of new ideas and meanings into view.

Artists:

Yinka Shonibare MBE
Born 1962 in London. Lives and works in London. Shonibare’s work explores issues of race, class and colonialism through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and film. His trademark material is the brightly coloured “African” batik fabric he buys in London. This type of fabric was inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and finally sold to the colonies in West Africa. It has become a sign of African identity and independence.

Yee I-Lann
Born 1971 in Sabah, Malaysia. Lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yee I-Lann creates photographic, video, and installation works that explore issues of culture, power and the role of historical memory in contemporary social experiences.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Born 1970 in Bangkok, Thailand. Living and working in Chiang Mai. Brought up in Khon Kaen, northeastern Thailand, Weerasethakul has dealt with the political complexities of the region poetically and symbolically in his films and videos. In 2010, his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) won Palme d’Or in Cannes Film Festival. His latest, Cemetery of Splendour (2015), has been screening all over Japan this year.

UuDam Tran Nguyen
Born in 1971 in Kon Tum, Vietnam. Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh. UuDam studied art in Vietnam and the United States. Throughout his years in both countries, he has created movement-oriented works including video-based performances, sculptures, and interactive projects such as a drawing machine remotely controlled over the internet.

Ishikawa Ryuichi
Born in 1984 in Ginowan, Okinawa, Japan. Lives and works in Ginowan, Okinawa, Japan. Only ten years after picking up his first camera, Ishikawa has already made a powerful impact on the world of photography, including winning both the Kimura Ihei Award and the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer’s Award in 2015, with his breathlessly tension-filled images of the scenery and people of Okinawa where he lives.

Tamura Yuichiro
Born in 1977 in Toyama, Japan. Lives and works in Atami, Japan. Working in a wide range of media including video, photography, installation and performance, Tamura delves into the memory and history of localities and transforms these into new narratives that transcend time and space, presenting works that investigate the contemporary significance of past events.

Curator: Kimura Eriko (Yokohama Museum of Art)
Co-curators: Matsunaga Shintaro, Katada Yuko, Hibino Miyon, (Yokohama Museum of Art)

Press contact: 
Miyano Ritsuko, Fujii Satoko, Nagahama Sawako (PR, Yokohama Museum of Art), pr-yma [​at​] yaf.or.jp