Ego Obscura surveys Morimura’s 30-year-long career exploring representations of gender, sexuality, and the dynamics of power in cultural identity.
Japan Society
Posted inArt
When Encounters Between East and West Go Smoothly
At the Japan Society, Hiroshi Sugimoto: Gates of Paradise, legacies of inter-cultural encounter are seen through a lens of global understanding.
Posted inArt
The Hidden History of Wakashu, Edo-Era Japan’s “Third Gender”
An eye-opening exhibition at Japan Society closely examines representations of wakashu in woodblock prints from the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Posted inOpinion
Let’s Use the Art Strike to Hold Cultural Institutions Accountable
The action invites us to commit to challenging our institutions to resist Trumpism and combat the conditions that allowed its emergence.
Posted inArt
The Irish for Noh: The Masks of William Butler Yeats
Although the poetry of William Butler Yeats is often misconstrued as autobiographical, the poet scorned such transparency, calling it “unimaginative” and comparing realism to “putting photographs in a plush frame.”
Posted inArt
Reinterpreting W. B. Yeats’s 1916 Experiment with Japanese Noh Theater
At Japan Society, Simon Starling reinterprets a one-act play by W. B. Yeats in which Japanese Noh theater met European modernism.
Posted inSponsored
Japan Society Unveils New Noh-Inspired Project by Simon Starling
Japan Society Gallery opens Simon Starling: At Twilight (After W. B. Yeats’ Noh Reincarnation), the debut solo exhibition of the Turner Prize winner’s work at a New York City institution.
Posted inArt
In 1970s Japan, a New Art of Experiments, Edgy Photos, and Big Ideas
There are certain exhibitions in which some or many of the works on display are so interesting, provocative or well-made that they somehow manage to surmount whatever restrictive or overwrought critical-theoretical trappings their organizers have erected around them, defying the analytical filters through which they are meant to be considered and understood.
Posted inArt
Through a Lens, Inquisitively: Modern Photo Visions, of and from Japan
Most photographs of real-life events tend to be documentary by nature, but the kind of photographic image-making that makes a point of approaching its subjects with an “objective” viewpoint and a for-posterity sense of purpose — can such photos ever convey a truly neutral position vis-à-vis their subjects?
Posted inArt
An Anti-Zen Garden Full of Skulls and More Unearthly Unease
The beauty and hell of utopia and dystopia is the subject of Japan Society’s Garden of Unearthly Delights, which opened today in Manhattan.
Posted inArt
The Beginning Is the End: Mariko Mori at the Japan Society
It’s been about a decade since Mariko Mori had a museum show in New York, and much has changed in the Japanese artist’s work.
Posted inArt
The Unnatural Wonders of Japan’s Influential Rinpa Aesthetic
I always consider it fortunate that at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, exhibitions continue to argue eloquently that art has evolved along manifold trajectories before postmodern discourses recognized it as so. In that vein, one of the highlights of the fall museum season, Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art, which explores a distinctive style that originated in early 17th century Kyoto and thrived well into the 20th century with far-reaching resonance in Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau, promises more than an optical feast or a comprehensive academic survey.