Cao Fei’s piece is titled Play with your Triennale and it takes place in a Second Life space created by the artist known as RMB City. This virtual city (RMB is the Chinese national currency) is a project — over a year in the making — that endeavors to facilitate a public space for creation, construction, and discourse on the current and future state of the real and the imagined. Yet one with a noticeably Chinese slant: areas are given names such as “People’s Neo Village,” “People’s Slum”, and “People’s Love Center” and visitors will recognize distinct sights like the Three Gorges reservoir, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, and the Olympic “Bird’s Nest” stadium, though patched together as per the artist and her team’s surreal vision.

For the Triennale, the artist created a designated area in the “People’s Worksite” designed for audience participation and play. Here visitors can explore a space resembling a Chinese construction zone, detailed down to the makeshift bunks, and chat with the artist herself and the curators for the event in avatar form. As it looked at the opening preview the work site wasn’t much more than a field of dirt, a nice wide open space where one could practice trying out the controls, although there is a briefly amusing video embedded of the animated curators doing YMCA karaoke. But it is just that, a work site, in development. RMB City doesn’t officially open to the public until later in October, so what early visitors to the Yokohama exhibition have been treated to is essentially a preview, as well as the chance to become involved themselves. As the event progresses Cao Fei plans to fill in the rough space with select audience generated “Yokohama Dream Proposals.”

Any visitor from the general public is free to muse on this idea of having a hand in shaping a world where technically anything is possible. Technically, but not actually, and here in lies the catch: RMB City offers the freedom to imagine but it is not anarchy, the artist ultimately selects which projects are realized. Likewise, citizenship in the city is not to be taken lightly, as the “City Hall” requires a commitment in the form of a pledge of allegiance from avatars to RMB City. A dictatorship of sorts yes, but fair enough, she did make it and as the project advances and grows it will be interesting to see just what kind of ruler an artist overseeing a virtual community turns out to be.

Over time, Cao Fei intends to collaborate with real world art institutions and individuals around the globe, bringing in like-minded entities to develop in the city as per their own vision. Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art already has a building and another is in the works for the influential Swiss collector of contemporary Chinese art Uli Sigg. Buildings, however, are reported to cost around $100,000.

This is not RMB City’s first appearance at a large-scale art exhibition. The project made its debut at the 10th Istanbul Biennale in September of last year and held a “virtual real estate sale” at Art Basel Miami Beach that December. Nor is access limited to the art world, if you have a high-speed Internet connection, a sophisticated enough computer, and a Second Life login (free), you can visit RMB City anytime from any part of the world. Videos of the project’s development have even been posted on YouTube.

Considering the Triennale’s theme of “Time Crevasse,” which seeks among other things to examine the simultaneity and multiplicity of time and space and, through an emphasis on live performance, the singularity of the artistic moment, Play with your Triennale makes a striking contribution by bringing in the virtual world, along with universal themes like urbanization and identity, to the discussion table. Never mind that the majority of the art establishment may not know what to make of it: navigating Second Life requires a set of skills not found in an art history textbook.

RMB City also takes a rare, enthusiastic stand on the influence/invasion of technology in contemporary society, showing just what potential it holds. If the title Play with your Triennale is being at all facetious then it is more than likely poking fun at the solid, staid institution of the triennale itself. Although in many ways the goals of Yokohama and RMB City are similar: to brand a space as a global art capital and attract the requisite international collection of artists, curators, critics, and fans to demonstrate its relevance. Play with your Triennale however, by not only imploring audience participation but also by hanging its very outcome on that contribution, makes itself measurably vulnerable to viewer caprices, and that, despite the slick digital veneer, wields a certain fragile beauty of its own.

The first chapter, called The Least Resistance (1981), featured the rat and bear running around Los Angeles while falling into oblique discussions on the art industry. The second chapter, The Right Way (1982), saw the animal duo embark on a Swiss Alpine excursion. In Yokohama, they’ve made their way into an Italian palazzo. But in place of snappy dialogue, Rat and Bear are strangely mute and bewildered! Perhaps they’re afraid to disturb the stateliness of this hallowed setting. They spend much time dallying on the stairs, aimlessly stumbling around the lavish premises; here, admiring the gold cornices and cherubs on the ceiling; there, staring at reflections of themselves in large gilded mirrors.

In one scene, they edge slowly closer to one of the mirrors, dumbstruck, and begin incredulously combing their own fur, stroking their furry faces in wonder, as if shocked to be in their own skin (or fur, as the case may be). Rat and Bear seem to be trapped in a play whose director has suddenly disappeared, and they have forgotten what they should do next. They watch themselves (or larger, or smaller, versions of themselves) wander around an existential toy diorama without a plot, peering curiously into the depths of smoky glass capsules; as the bigger animals stare back. They, too, are players perplexed at their own production.

On another screen, they seem to have escaped the capsules! And so ensues a hilarious game of tag, packed with slapstick gags – the four animals big and small chase each other over an overpolished and slickly varnished floor that makes them slip and fall over. They run backwards, stumble, spin around on their tummies, and at last keel over in exhaustion.

Playacting for Fischli and Weiss holds a genuine old-world enchantment without irony, fleshed out by characters that are closer to the Wind in the Willows than Disneyland. Contrast this to Paul McCarthy’s orgy on a pirate ship video installation, also showing at the Triennale, in which pirate and ogre costumes help to truss up a campy, hammed-up paroxysm of self-conscious role-playing. McCarthy’s costume play functions as a burlesque of a pathologically smiley Disney world with relentlessly jolly characters. He creates a parallel universe of perversity that permits a wide array of grotesque behavior. With orgasm written all over their smarmy faces, the actors treat each other to dramatized therapy sessions, where they achieve a sense of catharsis from repressed sexual desires and violent impulses.

In contrast, while Rat and Bear also have existential problems, they seem authentically absorbed in their non-encounters in the palazzo. Along the way they manage to amuse and even astound themselves, happily trapped in a cabinet of their own wonder. Their approach to life is to wonder at the mechanisms of the world, to scrutinize mundane phenomena, and to dally while doing it – much like Fischli and Weiss themselves, who in this languidly-paced video installation do little more than orchestrate a couple of gags.

Compared to the weightier subject matter tackled by several of the more conceptual video works at the Triennale by artists like Douglas Gordon or Mike Kelley, Parts of a Film seems content just to ponder itself, mutely; to indulge in a bit of floundering, and to enjoy the silliness of a few of its own outtakes. A bit like wandering around the Triennale, actually: with no captions for the works on display, visitors scuttle around slightly bewildered, peering curiously at objects in this carnival of wonders whose directors have neglected to give their players a script.

“No matter how easy it is to surf the Net or how inconvenient it is for our real bodies to be weighed down by the forces of gravity, the act of trying to unravel self-consciousness as an anchor for our fragile and unreliable body is proof that our bodies are fated to be with us until the very end.”

‘Trace Elements - spirit and memory in Japanese and Australian photomedia’ is, on the surface, not dissimilar to exhibitions at other large Tokyo museums of contemporary art. Two curators — Shihoko Iida from Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and Bec Dean from Performance Space, Sydney — have selected a group of artists from their respective contexts who would not usually find themselves conceived of as a group. Aesthetically, being collected under the wide umbrella term of photomedia, we find dark spaces in which “photography”, “video”, or “installation” are juxtaposed to tease out each individual artist’s style, while maintaining the notion that all the works emanate from some ‘proto/photo’ ancestor. The works all use photomedia to deal with issues of memory, spirit and mediated identity.

Iida Shihoko was quite clear that this exhibition was not about simply presenting the “new”. Nevertheless, most works are quite recent, and one — Kazuna Taguchi’s photographic series ― has been specifically commissioned. Some works readily stand out, most obviously the late Teiji Furuhashi’s large installation, LOVERS, around which the whole exhibition seems to orbit, and which Iida suggested was a central work in the curatorial concept. It was originally presented in 1994, when Furuhashi was the key member of the now well-known hybrid performance group Dumb Type, whose hybrid performance piece S/N is also being presented as a film, throughout September. Other works, such as the photographic series by Taguchi or Jane Burton, are full of suggestion that readily spark myriad associations, but may take time to sink into – more time than some may be willing to give.

Seiichi Furuya’s haunting photographs — a sequence of images documenting years spent living with his emotionally troubled wife, who committed suicide in 1985 — are a reminiscence on the traces of a loved, living body that gradually slipped beyond the clutches of reality. Having relentlessly used his camera as a point of contact with his life, numerous minor details assume an incredible poignancy in retrospect, yet must surely have seemed mundane or insignificant at the time. Furuya’s work nowadays consists more of re-editing these distant traces, to make sense of his past for the sake of the present. The result is a set of images in which it seems as though time has stopped, neither clearly in the present nor the past, and Furuya has managed to steal into the cluttered halls of his memory, capturing belated snapshots of ‘that day…’, or ‘the walk we took after…’, ‘the way you used to…’, ‘what I saw when you…’ – the completely nondescript sense of time that forms when two people are living it together.

The merging of translucent, projected bodies in Teiji Furuhashi’s LOVERS, which move around the viewer, and through which viewers themselves move, expresses the immateriality of identity. Meanwhile, Sophie Kahn uses digital scan technology, which maps the body’s intricate dimensions and yet hollows it out, rendering flesh as a slowly fraying digital fabric. Kahn’s work also shows how visual artists need to continue to appropriate image making technologies to interrogate not simply what these technologies do, but what they implicate about the ever changing conditions for being ‘human’. Similarly, the mixed reality of Alex Davies’ video work or Kazuna Taguchi’s photography suggest how material presence is increasingly a kind of virtual or augmented reality; we literally see our ‘self’ through these visual technologies.

Such ‘ghosts in the machine’, as co-curator Bec Dean puts it, obliquely connect to issues of Australia’s indigenous history in the work of Genevieve Grieves, whose use of video as ‘real-time photographs’ suggests that history itself is a virtual reality, constantly open to being reenacted and redefined from the present. In addition to her work as an artist, Grieves works as an image historian in Australia, tracing historical photographs of ‘anonymized’ ‘Aborigines’ to their living descendents. Such image repatriation establishes crucial recognition of long neglected specific historical identities for indigenous people in Australia. Yet her artwork, addresses issues of forced assimilation, particularly the ‘stolen generation’ — a generation of indigenous children who were taken from their families to be “properly” educated at mission schools and placed in white families — in a more nuanced, subversive reading of the authorial power of visual technologies themselves, both past and present.

According to Bec Dean, “the curatorial intention behind ‘Trace Elements’ is not to survey, but rather to reflect on a particular moment.” Nevertheless, many questions remained. Why an ‘Australia-Japan’ exhibition, when every one else had some Beijing Olympics angle to their program? Why now, two years after the Australia-Japan Year of Exchange? Moreover, the artists gathered under these ‘national’ labels seem more like a group of individual artists, rather than examples of any culturally specific world view.

With these questions in mind, I spoke with Iida about how such a project came about. It became clear that this exhibition intended to build on fledgling ties established through the 2006 Australia-Japan Year of Exchange; moreover, its ‘cross-cultural’ statement of intent seems to have been almost a strategic ruse employed by the curators to attract resources, while effectively creating an exhibition which challenges the limited networks that such cultural institutions typically foster through one-off ‘international’ exchange periods.

In effect, this exhibition is firstly a conversation between two curators, each of whom wishes to extend the bounds of their local networks. Unassuming and straightforward as it is, ‘Trace Elements’ emerges as an example of what may be a small but dynamic trend in curatorial initiative in the Japanese art scene, with far-reaching implications. After our conversation, it felt as though, for the curators at least, ‘Trace Elements’, may not simply be an exhibition, but rather a subtle manifesto.

To read an interview with Shihoko Iida, the curator of this exhibition, click here.

Is ‘Trace Elements’ directly to connected to the 2006 Rapt! Project that you worked on, or only slightly?

The mission of the Japan Foundation is to introduce culture or knowledge about Japan overseas; they are not interested in having the project come back to Japan… although they do sometimes come back.

So the main thing for the Japan Foundation is to introduce Japan for ‘export’, but the main curators and I didn’t want to do that for “Rapt!”. We decided to curate something opposite to the export-package style of exhibition, instead making it more a ‘work in progress’, not only for the artists but the curators. We also decided to invite professionals from different fields. This was for the “Rapt!” project, and then that has come back into “Trace Elements”.

The Japan Foundation changes the focus of their country-based projects each fiscal year. This year, 2008, was China, Indonesia, France… So it is almost impossible to realize an effective network for the future; their approach is just about planting a seed. It takes time… We can meet people, and we can get to know each other through an initial contact, at an instinctive level, but it takes time to develop a network of people, to develop working relationships into friendships, being able to discuss something together.

So is it superficial? That there isn’t time to build something in that one fiscal year…

I think so. That’s why I thought that it wasn’t necessary to work with certain other projects or institutions, because we can continue our relationships or friendships with a longer perspective, because I work as an independent – I mean, even though I belong to this foundation, as the in-house curator, I also work for different people in society. I can select; I think I have a right to select. So one year is not enough…

Then, if I could get such good resources [for a project like Rapt!], I thought, why don’t I or we make such resources come back to Japan, to this foundation or our audience here? I’m not saying the Japan Foundation is meaningless; but their mission is just to sow a tiny seed, and we have the chance to make that grow. So then I used these resources and constructed a different concept and project, this exhibition “Trace Elements”.

Do you think there are many curators such as you, who are trying to work on these budding networks, and use these resources? Like everywhere, there are fewer and fewer resources for new cultural projects; are there many others here who see this as an opportunity?

I would say no, but it depends on the institution and the character of the person. If a curator works for a museum in Japan then they have a tendency to be like a lecturer or researcher, with an academic base; maybe they don’t have the same desire to make such projects happen.

So it’s a question of curatorial methodology?

Yes exactly. I’m interested in doing exhibitions, but then I’m also interested in thinking about the system or institutionalization which makes art an industry, and museology is part of that perhaps. I’m also interested in sociology. I know that several curators in my generation take on outside projects privately, because curators cannot do everything in the institution that they belong to. The museum is just one part of our entire activity.

Are museums understanding when it comes to such personal projects?

It depends: if it’s a big, two-year project, like with the Japan Foundation, then I need to get authorization from my directors, of course. It also matters if I get paid an outside fee… in most cases that’s not allowed. But if I take a day off, or holidays, then I use that for outside projects. That becomes an added responsibility — I end up working double, almost! But in most cases it’s a much smaller project, and I don’t get any payment so it’s okay. With publications, it’s a different matter because you get a fee, but I think that even the academic type of curator may write and publish books, and that’s a kind of outside project. What I do is sometimes write reviews or catalogue essays for outside publications or exhibitions. It’s the same — it doesn’t make any difference in terms of curating practices, because making an exhibition is not the only form of curation. Curating can also be writing.

For some people it’s just about putting artworks together…(Laughs) Yes, but I also want to question the exhibition itself. It works, but on the other hand sometimes it doesn’t work. If I question the structure of the art industry itself then I need to be critical of the form of the exhibition itself, to see whether it’s effective or not.

Are there any fundamental differences between the Australian and Japanese artists dealing with these media?

They are not so different on a fundamental level, because they are dealing with media that are still ‘new media’…

Not necessarily with this exhibition, but it seems like a lot of photomedia in Japan is autobiographical, and self-performative…

I think there is also such a tradition in literature too, but of course in the case of literature this tradition is not limited to Japan. But in terms of “art” so to speak, I agree there are still many Japanese artists working with self-representation or self-portraiture; their inner world. I think that’s why many foreign professionals are interested in why there is so much about daily life, so much self-portraiture, so much work about ‘me’. But it’s kind of a different form of ‘me-ism’, different to the States. And then they say that there is less conceptual work in Japan, and I think that’s true. I’ve found that, not only in Australia, but in so-called multicultural countries there are lots of issues with identity, borderlines and a lot of engagement with social politics through artwork.

My co-curator Bec Dean and I were aware that there is a so-called typical representation of each country. I in particular wanted to escape from that context, so that’s why we set up the theme and selected artists according to the theme or context. So even though there is this concept of photomedia and we have included some ‘typical’ artists, like Genevieve Grieves who is an indigenous artist whose work deals with her history, or also Seiichi Furuya, in the way he deals with his self-motivated practice…We could say that these are typical representations of the these artists, but still we didn’t make the exhibition based on that background.

So did you decide on the theme together, then decide which artists might be appropriate?

Yes. First, we both came up with the concept of ‘trace elements’; then in most cases we selected artists and sometimes exact works. Only in the case of Kazuna Taguchi did I commission new work. So there is nothing very cutting-edge or very new, because this is not an exhibition that aims to introduce something new. Most of the works are very recent, but the theme is different from showing “new” things. So in terms of our curatorial methodology it’s quite basic and conservative, but it’s something I haven’t really done before, so I wanted to try it at least once! (laughs)

It’s a very basic approach, to decide on artists then works, then ask the artist ‘Can we render this work to this context?’. It’s the traditional way of curating, I think.

Sometimes this can work quite well. I was reading something just recently about large exhibitions with sub-themes and categories; that the art can’t live up to the curatorial framework…

Well, I understand; most people in the audience don’t care about the concept at all really, only in a few cases. That’s why the work is very important, because the work tells you everything. Even if you build up some concept it might be read or interpreted by the audience in a different way, and that’s fine. The audience came to see the artworks, not only to understand our [the curators’] thoughts.

Some are critical or skeptical when it comes to the question of artists being able to subvert the systems that new media comes from, or creatively appropriate the language of new media. Is there a space for an avant-garde in ‘new media’ to begin with?

That’s one reason I thought if I cover them all under the larger umbrella terms such as ‘contemporary art’ or ‘photomedia’, we could bring different fields into one context.

Do you think it is possible in the future to have, not only a cross-platform, but a platform-less, approach?

I hope so, and I think it has to eventually. But in terms of practical reasons it might be difficult, especially with new media works as they require a certain space, a budget and scheme to be realized. One difficulty with ‘new media’ is that there is not so much flexibility in installing each particular work; it involves a lot of technical elements. But if it were a huge international biennale or festival, then perhaps it would be possible.

Does this make the museum take on a more ‘biennale’-type role? Artists from many different places, mixtures of technologies, broader themes…

Yes, it’s getting to be like that; I think it will increase in the museum context. But in the context of festivals or biennales, their themes are becoming very weak. Organizers need some kind of message, even if just a slogan or something. It’s a kind of marketing strategy, but still it’s just a gathering of works from different fields. So I think it depends on the scale of the project. On a smaller scale the message, theme or concept may be projected more strongly. I think this trend will grow, but it’s not necessary, only in as much as curators feel it’s necessary to make a statement about society.

Memory, spirit, self-perception, individual versus collective history – these are keywords that are suggested as having an influence on photomedia within the concept of the exhibition ‘Trace Elements’. In your understanding, what is this ‘influence’?

Memory, time, spirit – some of these words are part of the exhibition subtitle; they’re classic themes, and many people involved in photomedia have worked on these themes over the past two hundred years. It’s a very basic and fundamental question, dealing with photomedia. So, again, I feel this exhibition didn’t say anything “new”, because it’s a different value, being ‘new’ that is. But I thought such themes effectively allow you to question changes in photomedia, using big themes such as memory, spirit and time, because everything changes — the condition of memory, the condition of time, or spirit — and that’s why it reflects the human spirit or contemporary society. So it can be like a mirror to reflect the situation, on a very personal level. I’d like each visitor to feel as though this exhibition is saying something personal to them, as an individual; it’s not an open question to society as a collective, but a one-to-one dialogue. Each person can interpret it according to their own values, since everyone has memory, everyone has their own sense of time.

It feels like what your are describing is a “dialogue” on a more personal platform rather than a something cultural or theoretical.

Yes, because the cultural — that huge platform — consists of the personal level. If I deal with a collective group from the beginning then I haven’t established any platform, because there isn’t any core existence, I can’t feel it; because the ‘collective’ is just a notion or idea.

Like a utopia?

Yes, yes. That’s why I believe art is very personal anyway. Maybe we cannot understand, exchange or collaborate, or cannot understand how others feel or think… If there is another ‘me’ then maybe they could understand, but everyone is different. So I feel that art is ultimately something very personal. Maybe we cannot understand each other in the end, but still that’s why we need to speak, to talk or try to communicate with each other, to be able to communicate better. Art is very effective as a means to try to communicate. If I didn’t believe in the possibility of communication and the possibility of art, then maybe I wouldn’t be doing this; but I believe in it on a fundamental level, while being aware that it’s aiming to achieve goals that are very difficult to attain, if not impossible.

To read a review of this exhibition, click here.

This exhibition introduces over 300 Edo-period pieces from the Matsuzakaya Kimono Museum, established in 1931. Kosode (literally “narrow-cuffed dress”) form the focus of the collection, supplemented by other textiles such as Momoyama-period tsujigahana fabrics and Noh costumes, as well as numerous additional objects associated with costume.

The Edo period (1603-1868), characterised by its burgeoning merchant class, tremendous urban growth and wealth of artistic schools and styles, saw an increase in the consumption of luxury clothing. Textiles were the medium for the dissemination of style and subject in the decorative arts. They provided a means of utilizing new wealth in displays of taste, and even of refinement in the adaptation of literary themes in kosode design.

As an important starting point, albeit perhaps positioned a little late on in the exhibition, what many people called ‘hinagatabon’ (pattern books) are displayed, which show the transition of the kosode design from paper to cloth. They reveal the wide range of motifs made available to the eagerly awaiting client, which would then be brought to life with a variety of dyes, decorative techniques and colour combinations. Printed using woodblocks, the hinagata themselves are artworks and precious records of Edo period fashions. Wearers of the kosode could refer to detailed explanations of the motifs in the pattern books, so that they would be able to explain the design to inquisitive viewers or the admiring guest they chose to entertain. Understanding the story or symbolism linked to the pattern was as essential as wearing it at the right occasion and at the right time of year.

The scale of the exhibition allows you to see the changes in kosode style throughout the Edo period, however the arrangement of the pieces is not bound to a chronological order. Early period kosode appear to be predominantly simpler, tending to feature larger bolder motifs. Examples can be seen in two pieces, kosode with design of chrysanthemums in kanoko shibori dyeing and embroidery on white plain-weave silk and kosode with design of monochoria (mizuaoi) in kanoko shibori dyeing on red figured satin. Both boast bold simple designs, the beauty of which extends far beyond the surface pattern. The naming of the techniques themselves are evocative – “kanoko shibori” for example means ‘pattern of white spots’ referring to the white dappling on a fawn’s hide.

Other trends that can be picked out from the collection range from auspicious symbols, famous places (meisho), art objects and narrative. An obi depicting a design of pines, bamboo, plums in embroidery on white silk combines three auspicious plants, which would most likely be worn at an occasion such as New Year. Bamboo symbolising emptiness and thus symbolically the embodiment of the absence of self or ego is a recurring image. Along with pine, it also represents longevity. Plum blossom is an auspicious New Year flower and a harbinger of spring, as it is the first flower to bloom while snow is still on the ground. The reduction of the three plants to simple single motifs shows the extent to which they became significant visual icons.

An example of a narrative abstracted and reduced to its essentials for decorative purposes can be seen in the kosode with design of irises and plank bridges. The choice of flower and bridge alludes to part of episode nine, from the Tale of Ise, when the protagonist, Narihira, exiled from the capital pauses with his companions during their journey by a marsh filled with irises. There he composes a poem to express the sadness of finding himself so far from home. As the poem captures Narihira’s sensitivity to the beauty of nature, the wearing of such motifs would show the person’s appreciation of the literary classics and the informed viewer would understand the implicit reference to the original image. Literary themes were particularly celebrated by rinpa (literally Korin school) artists who sought to revive Heian period court classics such as The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Ise. As a single layer garment, colour and pattern are essential to the kosode such that the exhibition acts like a compendium of the diverse techniques, involving woven design, dyeing by various distinctive methods, embroidery, enrichment by metallic thread and painting in dyestuffs. Haute couture never looked more splendid.

The opening act of this exhibition — an installation titled Them and Us, Us and Them (2000) — is no less impressive, set in a bright and fantastical atrium. Here, taxidermy birds, their heads stuffed inside those of colorful and cartoon-ish, decapitated stuffed animals, swing from perches made of looking glass. Look up at one of these double-stuffed birds and you will see yourself looking back. I was struck by how the contrast echoed the silent world inside the peaceful white gallery walls versus the chaos reigning outside.

The French artist titles many of her pieces with dichotomies: Inflating, Deflating; Spoken, Unspoken; Men I like, don’t like. The language the museum uses to describe her works similarly employs pairs of opposing concepts: childhood and adulthood, humor and fear, protection and destruction, religion and secularity, nature and artifice…

If anything, these contrasts show the limits of language to adequately describe the scene at hand. Messager works within the museum’s cavernous warrens, connecting, and existing between the two ends of so many spectrums and it is from this place, I believe, that she deploys “The Messengers.”

The exhibition spans her forty-year career, including early pieces characterized by her tendency to collect things and more recent fantastical works, a glimpse at her notebooks, and an excerpt from her Golden Lion Award winning Casino installation created for the 2005 Venice Biennale. Seen in this scope (this is Messager’s first solo exhibition in Japan) her body of work is altogether captivating.

There are complex mechanical installations that fill whole rooms, such Articulated, Disarticulated (2001-02), an orchestrated theater of roughly hewn but mechanized marionettes of stuffed animals, some of which heave up and down as though breathing. There are also simpler, more personal works, such as My Trophies (1986-88), a series of black and white photographs of illustrated palms of hands, followed by the same word written over and over again, simultaneously like a naughty child and one being condemned to work off a sin, in colored pencil on the gallery wall. You’ll notice the changing handwriting and learn at the end, where a video of the installation process plays, that local art students lent their hands for this piece.

Messager is most well-known for her use of less then typical media: yarn, dresses, books, colored pencils, dead birds, even body parts (or photographs of) are commandeered as canvases, but above all there are the stuffed animals. Well-loved and worn, or crude replicas made from stockings, these children’s toys are employed as effigies, impaled with colored pencils, skinned and pinned to the wall like scientific specimens, reshaped into letters spelling out messages, and dissected and reformed into imaginary creatures, hanging limp from the ceiling. This palette combines to form a montage of a discarded childhood, a coming of age ritual played out in infinite variation.

Her work is ultimately rooted in the mundane world: the artist accumulates this diverse collection of materials from those close to her or places she has happened across; flea markets, it seems, are a rich source of retired stuffed animals. The familiarity of these materials, which we know more intimately by touch then by sight, inspires a palpable sense of closeness to Messager’s works. This tangibility has the power to draw the viewer quite literally: a Japanese couple next to me was scolded for touching a stuffed cow. It goes without saying that museum-going adults are rarely moved to break the understood barrier between destructive fingertips and important artistic constructions.