Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, is the current exhibition of the Lacen Galerie in Paris.
The exhibition draws its title from a collection of texts by Japanese author Kenzaburo
Oe.
Oe addressed the extremely difficult task for Japan of reconstructing itself on its cultural
and historical roots while Western influence was more and more deeply felt.
This group show presents this ambiguity through photographs and one video, inter-
weaving the perspectives of a Western man and a Japanese woman on a country that
has undergone a radical transformation over the past several years. Whether in the
rigorist framework of David Balhuizen’s refined, earth-toned photographs or in the
more “pop” flourishes of Miki Nitadori’s autobiographical video, these perspectives
exude a palpable malaise: what is left of a people once they have abandoned their
culture?
Far from the typical images of a high-tech or, on the other hand, bucolic Japan, David Balhuizen’s photographs exacerbate the loss of an identifying trait. Color collapses the space between isolated individuals in anonymous universes.
Written by Emma
0 comments
Leave a comment