ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
53 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte
Giardini di Castello - Giappone 

WINDSWEPT WOMEN : The Old Girls' Troupe
Miwa Yanagi

For this installation, Yanagi will take the Takamasa Yoshizaka-designed Japan Pavilion built in 1956 and cover its exterior with a black, membrane-like tent. Invoking the original idea of a “pavilion” as a free standing or temporary structure, the fluidity and mobility of the tent form will turn the Japan Pavilion into a temporary playhouse. Inside, Yanagi will install giant 4m high photograph stands containing portraits of women of varied ages. A new video work and series of small photographs will also be shown. Upon entering, viewers will feel disoriented, losing their sense of scale and perspective as they walk among oversized works.

The motif of this installation is a troupe comprised exclusively of women traveling with their mobile house—a tent—on the top of their caravan. This tent, inspired by the novels of Japanese modernist writer Kobo Abe, has already appeared in Yanagi’s previous Fairy Tales (2004-05) series of staged photographs, and has been a key to expressing ambivalent themes such as the tensions between “life and death,” “past and future,” “confinement and mobility” and “everyday life and festival.”

Andrew Maekle - Can you describe the different characters of the "Windswept Women"?

Miwa Yanagi - There are five women, the youngest is a teenager and the eldest is in her 70s. (..)
It was quite challenging to make the work because we had to create two sets of prosthetics for each model. The breasts used in the photo-shoots had to be firm so we could get a clean shot while the models posed for the camera, but it was important that the breasts in the film sway with the dancers' movements, and thus those had to be supple.

Curatori : Hiroshi Minamishima

Artisti : Miwa Yanagi

Web site : http://www.jpf.go.jp