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- Convenor:
-
Nieves Moreno
(Escuela Universitaria de Artes TAI)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Visual Arts
- Location:
- Auditorium 1 Jan Broeckx
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on different artistic and filmic creations that investigate and reconsider female identity and the role of women as an element of change in contemporary Japanese society, through works in which the relation between welfare, nature and ecology are a central axis.
Long Abstract:
The artists presented in this panel proposal are examples of a common characteristic that can be identified in the work of different contemporary artists in the last two decades: the investigation and reevaluation of female identity and the role of women as an element of change in contemporary Japanese society. Methods and tools of representation are being used to reflect and demarcate social and individual contemporary identities. This art, linked to various processes such as the connection with tradition, nature or dealing with trauma, would fulfill the role of reshaping, even if only in symbolic terms, the role of women in designing a future marked by ecology, the welfare of others, and personal empowerment. Within the different transgenerational perspectives that deal with these issues, the artistic expressions presented in this panel offer a particular vision that transcends the territorial and cultural borders of Japan. Thus, we can see how Matsui Fuyuko explores and analyzes aggression and violence exerted on the body through the subversion of traditional themes such as kusôzu or yureiga, which connect with the post-war male gaze in artistic manifestations such as nihonga’s ayashii style or popular culture’s eroguro. The artist interprets this tradition to tell us about her individual trauma, presenting artistic representation as a healing therapy. In the case of Mori Mariko, she presents her works, which are a symbiosis of art and technology, as a spiritual path that may lead us to reconnect with nature. In her works created in Okinawa, her creative process merges with the role of the Okinawan noro or shaman. Finally, this panel will focus on the filmic manifestations that have addressed the ecologist and ecofeminist concerns in contemporary Japanese society, mainly among young women. These were triggered by the 2011 natural and nuclear disaster in the Tohoku area, combined with the latest events resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Films created and set in relation to these two major events will be used as a tool in which a sustained and critical conversation between ecofeminism and the role of women in contemporary Japan will be presented.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 August, 2023, -Nieves Moreno (Escuela Universitaria de Artes TAI)
Paper short abstract:
Urban-rural migration is acquiring a new dimension in Japanese society specially after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. This paper explores the filmic representation of this movement encouraging young women to return to nature.
Paper long abstract:
Urban-rural migration movements have been extensively documented in the USA and Europe since the 1960s. However, this circumstance is acquiring a new dimension in contemporary Japan specially after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The so-called U-Turn phenomenon is bringing back women from Japanese metropolises to rural and peripheral areas. Fears about food safety and nuclear threat as well as social pressure are creating a new interest in the idea of “back to nature” or “back to the roots” among female urbanites. The U-turn movement is re-evaluating societal values and breaking down traditional assumptions about women expectations.
This paper explores the filmic representation of this migration movement. It examines how cinema encourages women to return to their traditional origins, framing nature in a positive light as opposed to the congested urban living. In particular, this paper focuses on film-texts about young women moving out of cities and returning to their family’s villages. Films like Umi no futa (Toyoshima Keisuke, 2015) based on a Banana Yoshimoto’s novel about a young woman who starts her own kakigori business in a small town, or Riteru Foresuto (Mori Junichi, 2014-2015) based on a manga story about a girl who decides to start her new rural life as a farmer represent this “back to basics” trend.
We argue that this cinema illustrates a revaluation of contemporary life from an ecofeminist perspective as well as links women with tradition and nature forcing them to return to a more patriarchal environment.
Aitana Merino (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how Matsui Fuyuko addresses aggression and violence exerted on the body through the subversion of traditional themes such as kusôzu or yureiga, which connect with the post-war male gaze in artistic manifestations such as nihonga’s ayashii style or popular culture’s eroguro.
Paper long abstract:
Matsui Fuyuko's work is articulated around the representation of female trauma under the aesthetics of the grotesque and the technique of nihonga painting.
The women presented by the artist move away from the romantic fantasy projected on the female body that was promoted by the bijinga genre to suggest the opposite: vulnerability, decadence and death. Matsui's work functions as an escape mechanism from her darkest thoughts. The women's bodies depicted in her work, sometimes self-portraits, become a kind of artistic self-injury, an aggression but also a therapy for the survivor of trauma. Through the visualization of these bodies, she works on her memory in an attempt to heal herself and even to help those who identify with that pain.
The sad fate of many women is sensed through the artist's choice of subjects: spiteful ghosts, deranged women and decomposing corpses exposed only to satisfy male desire. In her work, themes such as kusôzu or yureiga, connect with the post-war male vision in trends such as the ayashii style or eroguro. In her work, themes such as pain, self-destruction and death are the real protagonists, always told from a feminine point of view and a personal aesthetic that distances her from the kawaii aesthetics and connects her at the same time to the medieval Kamakura period.
The wide combination of influences with which her work dialogues, traditional and contemporary, Japanese and foreign, place her along the same lines as other artists of her generation that can also be found on the border between the most marginal culture and high Japanese national culture. This contributes to define a certain identity and imagery of today's Japan that nevertheless speaks to an international public that identifies with the same concerns.
Ana Trujillo (Universidad Pontificia Comillas)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores Mori Mariko’s works in Okinawa within the context of artistic creations by other Japanese artists that have casted an exotic view over Okinawa and have interpreted these islands, their landscape and culture, as the repository of a premodern and timeless Japan.
Paper long abstract:
Artist Mori Mariko’s career, since the late 1990s, has been characterized by her aim to create works of art that revitalize the connection between mankind and nature. According to the artist, in remote times, a direct and harmonious relation with nature existed, but in contemporary times this connection has been lost. Searching throughout diverse cultural and spiritual traditions of the past, Mori looks for inspiration to create artworks that, although based in the use of technology, aim to offer a model or a path to recover that long-lost harmonious relation with our natural surroundings.
Since the early 2000s the artist has spent time in Okinawa and the landscape and nature of this prefecture has become a source of inspiration for some of her works. Mori was not only moved by the beauty of these islands, but also by the rituals carried out by Okinawan shaman-priestesses or noro, rituals that, according to the artist, had been passed on throughout times without change, and through which nature is honored. In the year 2011 she revealed her site-specific project Primal Rhythm, in Miyakojima (Okinawa Prefecture), created through her Faou Foundation. This installation takes advantage of the geographical setting and the light of the winter solstice and, as explained by the artist, aims “to unite the celestial and the terrestrial, as a lasting testimony to pay the respect to the natural beauty of our surroundings on earth”.
With her work in Okinawa, Mori joins the list of Japanese artists that have discovered in the beauty of these islands an inspiration for their work. This landscape, which is often described as pristine or uncontaminated, has been seen as a repository of a remote past that has managed to survive unaltered. This presentation aims to situate the works created by Mori in Okinawa within the context of those artists who, coming from other parts of Japan, have casted an exotic view over Okinawa and have interpreted these islands, their nature, culture and traditions, as the repository of a premodern and timeless Japan.