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The exhibition Depth, Distance, Direction presents acclaimed artist, Etsuko Yoshida’s interactive animation, Little Things That Are Serious, and a group of four emerging artists stepping out of high tech Tokyo into downtown Toronto to transform the gallery into a mosaic of 3D video displays.
Yoshida’s animation features several episodes that allegorically share her awareness of women’s issues and challenges within the geo-political environment of Japanese/Asian culture.
Artistic experimentation with 3D video displays by the exhibition’s emerging artists mirrors the physical space they imagine, and draws the observer into their expanding perceptual world. Bold, symbolic arrows are central to the displays presented by Rie Miyazaki, Mikako Kobayashi, Yuko Nakasuka, and Saki Mizushima. Their multi-coloured arrows project the artists’ ambitions for the future, as well as an internal narrative permeated by their impending navigation between entrenched traditional norms and new ideas and realities.
Miyazaki’s, Straight, and Sentimental Rain exlpore the artist’s self-determination, and her struggle to remain in balance with the fluctuating emotions inherent to change. In Popopopopo, Kobayashi’s colourful drops of water patterns represent optimism, whereas Wandering grapples with the artist’s darker impressions of the barriers she may face as she finds her own way forward. Nakasuka’s, The Dreaming Mobile Phone, bursts with colourful static, and probes her sometimes needy relationship with the phone, wondering if it in fact might be ‘operating’ her. A Candy and a Monochromatic Party further reflects the tension, push and pull between reality and fantasy. In Only One, and Rafula, Mizushima expresses her sense of individuality as otherness and locates the future she hopes to forge by standing out against a backdrop of obstacles.
Etsuko Yoshida, an established artist, as well as the emerging artists presented in this exhibition, individually and collectively challenge barriers of convention as they examine the depth of their convictions, the distance they envision, and the directions of change that they themselves embody within contemporary Japanese culture.
WARC would like to thank Professor Hisaki Nate for coordinating the emerging artists presentations.
Bio:
Etsuko Yoshida
Etsuko Yoshida studied Image Arts as a member of the Graduate School of Art at Nihon University in Japan (M.A., 1997) and studied Japanese Traditional/Contemporary Music and Sound at NHK Artist Training Institute. Her installation artworks have been exhibited at Image Art Exhibition (Tokyo, 2001), Jeju International Art Fair (Korea, 2006), and Tokyo Crossing (Tokyo, 2007). She is a member of the Women's Studies Association of Japan, and technical manager of women's ICT and the BCC digital media tool training program at NPO in Tokyo. She is serving a distance learning program as technical assistant in Nihon University, and lectures on multimedia theory at Tokyo Polytechnic University.
Maxine Larin-Graham
A candidate for the Master in Educational Technology at Concordia University in Montreal and a Bachelorette in Fine Arts, Maxine Larin-Graham has worked with social media, electronics, robotics, holography, interactive installations and 3D video. Also, having lived and taught in a small English school in Tokyo for a year and a half, Maxine has had the liberty of corresponding with artists and surrounding communities which have enriched her perspective on pro-action in communities of practice.
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