The young Japanese today are characterised by their extravagant dress or by their dreams of obtaining luxury articles, as part of a search for identity fed by new standards, models and reference points. Tomoko Sawada questions this phenomenon with its infinite metamorphoses in the series of photographs in which she gets inside the skin of hundreds of Japanese girls.
With this fourth exhibition in the Kawaii! Japan today cycle, the Joan Miró Foundation is presenting the work of one of the most innovative and talented artists of her generation. For her solo show in Barcelona, Tomoko Sawada has prepared a new series of photographs that she is displaying for the first time.
I'm another
The work of Tomoko Sawada (Kobe, 1977) is open to a number of sociological and psychological interpretations. The way her lens captures dozens of Japanese girls and women of different ages and social classes raises in the most natural way the question of the place occupied by Japanese females in society, the possibilities that each one has of achieving an individual identity, and the way in which dress can help to individualise them or, on the contrary, confirm their membership of a group. It is tempting to see Sawada's work as a statement for or against these phenomena that are so typical of contemporary Japanese society, but what the artist is really interested in is what she calls the "exterior", her own perception of the society to which she belongs. She observes the world around her and reflects on the things in it that catch her attention or that annoy or surprise her. To date, she has produced a dozen different series, each showing some visual, sociological or historical aspect of Japanese women.
It all began when Tomoko Sawada was a student at the Seian University of Art and Design in Kyoto. That year, the compulsory subject was self-portraiture - an opportunity for the young artist to tackle this classic genre and reinvent it or appropriate it in an original way. Her teacher had been a pupil of Morimura - famous for including his own portrait in masterpieces of Western art - which meant that the basic tenets of her work were clearly established.
At the age of twenty-two, Tomoko Sawada produced one of her first series, ID 400 (1999), a hundred passport-sized black-and-white photos: good girls and naughty girls, classical and modern girls, girls with thick or plucked eyebrows. The series was produced with the minimum of technical resources: a photo machine at a petrol station. After this set of individual photos, Sawada began to explore in the opposite direction: group photographs, with a series of class photos in which the uniformed girls are the artist herself (School Days, 2006). This computer-generated series questioned the place of the individual within the group, originality in the midst of uniformity, and the values of the first social mould in life, which in Japan is the school. In her work, Tomoko Sawada does not judge or condemn Japanese social customs but simply makes the viewer notice them. In Omiai (2001), she concentrated on the continuing practice of arranged marriages (10% of marriages since 1995, but 70% fifty years ago). The girl's parents have a portfolio made up in a professional photographer's studio in order to present the future bride, posing and dressed for any occasion, to possible suitors. Sawada dresses herself in traditional kimonos or Western tailored suits or as a professional woman, to present these candidates for marriage in the appropriate poses for catching the ideal husband.
Fashion victims and new standards
Young Japanese girls today, however, live in much more emancipated times, as demonstrated by the series Cover (2004) now on show at the Joan Miró Foundation. Tomoko Sawada appears here looking like the girls in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, who rival each other in extravagance and inventiveness: fluorescent colours, imitation fur coats in acid colours, the briefest of mini-skirts and high platform heels all create a look that confirms the search for an identity and a transformation of the traditional female role in Japanese society. As well as following a dress code, the change of image also seeks to imitate the cover girls on magazines: bleached hair, over-tanned skin and lavish make-up create a social mask and a common identity. As if it were a contemporary interpretation of the mask, this practice can seem like a response to the traditional Japanese subculture in which the mask has a strong presence, especially in Noh theatre. Appearance and reality seem to share a single existence. On the other hand, photography touches the boundary between a reflection of reality and montage, as occurs throughout the work of Tomoko Sawada, who invents a new language that destroys the traditional classification of artistic practices: a photographer who doesn't produce photographs (the images are produced in a studio with the aid of a photographer).
Gothic and Kawaii
For the exhibition in the Espai 13 at the Joan Miró Foundation, Tomoko Sawada has created a new series of photographs - Decoration - in which she portrays a way of dressing that can be seen in particular in the Harajuku district in Tokyo: the Gothic Lolitas. It is characterised by layers of lace petticoats, ribboned bonnets, black leather or vinyl bodices, and hair curled or in ringlets. Every Sunday, the "Gothloli" girls can be seen at the entrance to Takeshita Dori, a well-known street in Tokyo. They look like porcelain dolls and strike the most Kawaii poses in front of the cameras of professional and amateur photographers alike. Rather than a disguise - like the cosplays that appear at manga gatherings and festivals - the Gothic Lolita style can be found in many towns and cities in Japan, especially Osaka. This trend, which emerged in 1998, became popular in the early years of the century with the appearance of various brands of clothing. One of the best known, Baby the Stars Shine, left its collections to Tomoko Sawada for this new series of photographs. In addition to this particular fashion, the artist explores the subject of uniformity and delves further into the idea of identity, likeness and individuality that can be found throughout her work. She was fascinated by this practice and consequently tried to find a way of appropriating it. This exhibition in the Espai 13 has given her the opportunity to do so.
Curator: Hélène Kelmachter
The exhibition has been organised with the collaboration of Galeria MEM, Osaka and with the support of Baby the Stars Shine.
The catalogue will be published by Éditions Akaaka.
