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Revelations by Judy Chicago @ Serpentine North

Judy Chicago is an American art celebrity, a feminist superstar, a ‘trailblazing artist, author, educator, cultural historian’, a godmother of modern American feminist art.

Born Judith Cohen in 1939, Chicago struggled against the patriarchal condescension of the art world in the mid-1960s and eventually made a number of drastic decisions. The most striking was, in 1970, changing her name to adopt the city of her birth, thus erasing the gender-controlling aspects of going by either her father or husband’s names. She assembled collectives of women artists and founded the first feminist art program in the United States at California State University, Fresno.

The Dinner Party

Her most famous work is ‘The Dinner Party’ which she began in 1974 and can be said to summarise many of her concerns and practices.

‘The Dinner Party’ is not a painting or sculpture but an installation made of multiple elements: most obviously it consists of a large triangular table on which are 39 elaborate place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women such as Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf and so on.

So it is 1) an unconventional object, not painting, sculpture or quite installation, 2) setting out to address one of Chicago’s central concerns, which is the erasure and omission of eminent women from history, secular history, religious history, art history, all of it created and written by men.

It’s also a characteristic piece in that it was 3) a collaboration which required a lot of assistance from collaborating artists and assistants. Over the 8 years of its creation some 400 women worked on it, mostly volunteers.

Participants gather in The Dinner Party studio, Santa Monica, CA, 1978. Courtesy the Judy Chicago Visual Archive, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

‘The Dinner Party’ is also characteristic in that 4) it confronts women’s sexuality head-on by having all of the 39 plates being vulvar in shape i.e. based on the shape and pattern of a woman’s genitals, a pattern she came to call ‘butterfly-vagina’ imagery. Broadly speaking, this is consists of a vertical oval representing the vaginal opening, with the folds of skin surrounding it (the labia minoria, labia majora and so on [according to the anatomy diagram I’m consulting]) represented in different ways, from folds of fabric to entirely schematic geometric patterns. Each of the 39 plates is a variation on the butterfly-vagina motif but vulvar imagery re-occurs frequently throughout Chicago’s oeuvre.

Hildegarde of Bingen plate line drawing from ‘The Dinner Party’ (1977) by Judy Chicago © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY Exhibition prints courtesy of the artist

‘The Dinner Party’ is also typical of Chicago’s work 5) in emphasising crafts, such as crockery and the needlework and fabrics which ornament the table, in foregrounding crafts which have traditionally, in the male-dominated art world, been relegated to a position inferior to painting and sculpture.

It is also characteristic in yet another way, in that 6) it went on tour, rather like a rock band, being shown in 16 venues in six countries on three continents to a viewing audience of 15 million. The very fact that the publicity around it emphasises these stats indicates the showbiz, world tour aspect of Chicago’s practice and reputation.

In this exhibition at Serpentine North ‘The Dinner Party’ has an alcove to itself, which, alas, doesn’t show the table itself (which has come to rest as a permanent installation at the Centre for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York) but displays various resources about it. So there are print versions of the designs on each plate, along with early colour studies of the banners used in the finished work and sketchbooks that reveal the working process and components that led up to it. There are three video screens showing interviews with members of the studio, documentary footage and a film that takes visitors on a tour of the work led by Chicago herself.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing the alcove containing sketches and videos relating to ‘the Dinner Party’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jo Underhill. Courtesy Judy Chicago and Serpentine

Maybe the last way in which ‘the Dinner Party’ is characteristic of Chicago’s work is that 7) it was made a long time ago, begun in 1974, half a century ago. Arguably, it speaks to a particular time and place and stage in the development of feminism as an ideology or collection of positions which have been eclipsed and superseded. Far from being occluded from history, nowadays you can’t go into a bookshop, turn on TV or radio, without encountering books, plays, films, documentaries and no end of other information about women in history, science, the arts and every other sphere of human activity. Which doesn’t detract from its power as a concept and a work and as a piece of feminist art history.

It’s interesting to read The Dinner Party Wikipedia article for the contemporary critical response among women critics and artists and then among Black women, to get a feel for how endlessly contentious these subjects are, and how the fiercest opposition often comes, not from the famous Patriarchy, but from members of your own movement.

Atmospheres

Talking of art from a long time ago, the second of Serpentine North’s ‘alcoves’ (or brick-lined passages) is devoted to an even older piece, or concept for multiple pieces, the use of coloured smoke.

Between 1968 and 1974, Chicago explored the male-dominated field of pyrotechnics and carried out a series of immersive, site-specific performances collectively known as ‘Atmospheres’. In these works Chicago moved right outside conventional artistic boundaries to use smoke as a medium to create expansive drawings in space. According to the curators:

Chicago saw ‘Atmospheres’ as a “gesture of liberation” that marked the release of colour previously contained within the “rigid structures” of her drawings and paintings and freed her from societal expectations.

She used smoke machines, fireworks, road flares and dry ice to ‘transform and soften the landscape’ and, crucially, to introduce ‘a feminine impulse into the environment.’ This would later become a central concern.

By their nature ephemeral, Chicago documented the smoke pieces through video and photography which is why a dozen or so photos and several videos projected onto hanging screens record the performances.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing the alcove/passage devoted to ‘Atmospheres’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jo Underhill. Courtesy Judy Chicago and Serpentine

Apparently, 40-plus years later, Chicago was invited to recreate or develop the idea of pyrotechnic art so that alongside the 70s footage there are films of much more recent events where, in what look like big festival-style events, she set off smoke displays and what look like pretty standard firework displays, at night, in American and European cities, to the whoops and cheers of delighted crowds.

Comparing these movies from 2019 and 2020 with the original small-scale, delicate and evocative films from the 1960s shows you how far American or Western culture has fallen, how so much that was novel or strange has been sucked into show business at VIP prices, with little or no space for strange, eccentric, individual gestures and thoughts.

The footage of naked young women painted red and green dancing in the desert holding smoke canisters in their hands are powerful not only because of their youth and beauty, but because their mysterious gestures, designed to invoke women-only rites and rituals, along with the very grainy quality of the old 16mm footage, hark back to a lost age of innocence and optimism.

Then (sweet, amateurish and interesting)

‘Smoke Bodies’ from ‘Women and Smoke’ by Judy Chicago (1972) Fireworks performance performed in the California Desert © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo courtesy of Through the Flower Archives Courtesy of the artist; Salon 94, New York; and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Now (slick, professional and boring)

‘Purple Poem for Miami’ by Judy Chicago (2019) Fireworks performance commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami in conjunction with the exhibition Judy ‘Chicago: A Reckoning, 2018 to 2019’© Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York Courtesy of the artist; Salon 94, New York; and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

‘Turning rebellion into money’ as the Clash predicted, 50 years ago.

Revelations

But despite The Dinner Party’s central place in Chicago’s oeuvre and biography, this exhibition is not about it. The exhibition is titled ‘Revelations’ because this is the title of a book Chicago started working on in the early 70s and added to throughout the period of the creation of ‘The Dinner Party’, but which only now, 50 years later, is finally being published.

The idea is that this book expressed fundamental feminist and religious beliefs which have underpinned Chicago’s practice ever since (at one stage it was titled ‘Revelations of the Goddess’). We are told that only recently has she found the time to revise and complete the book as a kind of illustrated manuscript, a little in the style of William Blake’s self-illustrated books. To quote the blurb:

‘Revelations’ draws on Chicago’s extensive research into goddess worship and women’s history, offering readers a radical retelling of mythological creation and sharing Chicago’s lifelong vision of a just and equitable world.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing a display case containing pages from the illuminated edition of ‘Revelations’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Not only did she complete it, but got it published. This exhibition is timed and designed to coincide with the official publication of ‘Revelations’ by quality art publisher Thames & Hudson. Which explains why the show a) displays selected pages from the final book b) is laid out according to the central concepts of feminist theology which Chicago develops in the book and c) of course, copies are stacked high for visitors to buy in the exhibition shop (or on Amazon).

Apparently, if you download the app using the QR code supplied on the wall labels, you can listen to Chicago reading excerpts from the book which vary as you walk around the gallery.

Feminist theology

‘Feminist theology’ I hear you ask? Yes, for although Chicago rejects the patriarchy and man-centric male control of the art world, of politics and the world in general, she nonetheless appears to believe in God.

As far as I could tell, this god is female. God is a woman. In this respect her thinking amounts to a mirror image of male theology: there is a God, but she is a woman and therefore created Woman first and Man simply to be her clumsy helpmate. Crucially – and a point she comes back to again and again – the most fundamental act of creation is female because it is giving birth. Only women give birth, in a shattering and dangerous and exhilarating process which has been both ignored, suppressed, rarely mentioned and never portrayed in patriarchal art. Addressing this glaring omission explains why the exhibition includes series of works addressing God the (Female) Creator and why the entire exhibition opens with a big, a really, really big wide frieze depicting the creation myth according to Judy, complete with text explaining the all-female creation of the universe in cod Biblical phraseology.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘In the Beginning’, her feminist creation myth (1982) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

This focus on the true, female nature of creation also explains why, later in the show, there’s a series of works depicting childbirth – not in realistically messy detail, not in blood-spattered photographs – but stylised into the mythological cartoon style Chicago developed and perfected in the later 1970s and 80s. This series is titled ‘The Birth Project’ and includes a number of finished works alongside preparatory drawings and sketches. Pretty much all of them show the act of birth from the business end, facing directly between a woman’s legs so as to see the parted thighs, the opening vulva and anus, with the breasts like two hills in the distance and, often, no head in sight.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘The Crowning’ (1983) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

The correlation between the female body and landscape is no accident – in this vision, women make the world and so are the landscape.

Evolution from abstract to cartoon style

The exhibition actually starts back before ‘The Dinner Party’ or ‘Atmospheres’ with a set of her earliest works, which are far more conventional drawings on paper consisting of lightly drawn geometric shapes shaded with pastel colours.

These are very soothing and calming. They reminded me a bit of the Hilma af Klimt abstracts shown at Tate Modern last year, or of the visionary drawings of Emma Kunz shown here at the Serpentine 5 years ago but much lighter and less cluttered than either. Simpler, airier. Maybe more like Agnes Martin.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing early drawings from the late 1960s) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Placed next to them are drawings from just a few years later which demonstrate a far more assertive use of colour, with the structure of the shapes more obviously defined, using bolder colours and with the grading of the colours from intense to pale, creating a more dynamic effect.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing early drawings from the early and mid-1970s © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

The curators make the point that the entire exhibition has a strong emphasis on Chicago’s drawings and sketches, maybe half the pieces here are drawings, and this is also the pretext for some quotes by Chicago on the centrality of drawing to her practice, before she gets near to the later, larger, more finished works.

Anyway I’m sharing these early pieces to highlight the next step in her development which is to treat human beings in much the same abstract shadow style, showing only the silhouette emphasised by dark shadowing, and using bold colours which shade away into pastel hues, which has the effect of making the images dynamic and, at the same time, simplified and cartoony.

‘Wrestling with the Shadow for Her Life’ from ‘Shadow Drawings’ (1982) by Judy Chicago © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY Courtesy of the artist

There are a dozen or so images like this and I liked them, probably because I like cartoons, I like strong defined outlines which is why, for example, I worship Degas. The flexible distorted postures of the human figures also appealed because they reminded me of both Matisse and Picasso who, in different ways, did something similar to the human body, turning it into bendy dancing outlines (for example Matisse’s The Dance, 1910). Probably there’s a strong feminist message to this image, as to all the others, but after a while I stopped reading the wall captions and just enjoyed the pictures.

There’s a subset of these which appear to address how horrible men are, a series titled ‘PowerPlay’ (1982 to 1987) which, as the curators put it, ‘interrogate notions of power, social conditioning, and the construct of masculinity’ – or, as a normal person might put it, are entertainingly comic cartoons.

So, for example, we have an imagine of a muscly man grasping a steering wheel which has morphed out of a version of planet earth which is going up in flames – presumably showing how toxic masculinity has instrumentalised the earth and is driving it down the road to ruin.

There’s a comic image of one of her shadow silhouette man with his willy hanging between his legs, letting rip a flow of yellow pee onto the earth. Yes folks, toxic men pissing all over nature (presumably because women don’t pee or, if they do, it’s in a discreet, non-toxic and environmentally friendly kind of way).

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing shadow drawings of toxic men from the early 1980s © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Simplistic images conveying a simplistic message: man bad. Destroy environment. Woman good. Save planet.

The environmental turn

Which goes to show that, like many older artists, half-way through her career Chicago’s work began to incorporate environmental and green concerns. Probably it was there from the start, as the green movement was born around the same time as feminism and was part of the studenty-60s counterculture rebellion climate which Chicago came out of. But whatever the history of her engagement with the issue, this exhibition goes on from the cartoon men to show work in which she consciously focuses on green issues.

One wall holds 13 or so smallish prints, from 2013 and 2014, of endangered animals outlined in white on a jet black background, and each one is given a text, written in Chicago’s characteristic cursive script, pleading with us to save the planet.

‘Stranded’ by Judy Chicago in ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

These, we are told, are all part of the #CreateArtForEarth campaign which Chicago set up along with the artist Swoon and Jane Fonda (of all people) who, apparently already runs an environmental campaign called Fire Drill Fridays.

Judge for yourself but these images all seemed to me to be, well, er, a little amateurish. At about this point in the exhibition the thought occurred that a lot of Chicago’s mid-period and later art depends quite heavily on the worthiness of the cause as much as, or more than, its aesthetic quality.

A tell-tale indicator of this is the increasing presence – you might say dominance – of text in the images. By the 2010s many, if not most, of the works here contain texts which ‘educate’ – or hector and harangue – the viewer, depending on taste.

Anyway, you too can contribute to #CreateArtForEarth just by posting on social media using the hashtag. You can upload anything, paintings, photos, sculptures, writings, poems, symbols, every little helps, and you can see how this matches the collaborative and co-operational mindset which I pointed out 35 years earlier in the heady ‘Dinner Party’ days.

I don’t want to come over as unduly cynical but as I read all this it did strike me as a prime example of ‘slacktivism’, whose dictionary definition is: ‘the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment.’ Uptick ‘Save the planet’. Like ‘End consumption’. There. That’s my contribution.

Anyway, the shadow cartoon style I highlighted earlier is combined with the environmentalism in one of the most successful pieces here, ‘Rainbow Warrior’ from 1980, named after Greenpeace’s activist ship. Another of her stylised naked women, apparently giving birth to the creatures of the sea. (The ‘rainbow warrior’ is, apparently, an ocean goddess from Inuit mythology, so it’s not just a whimsical image but an ethnographically accurate one.)

‘Rainbow Warrior – for Greenpeace’ by Judy Chicago (1980) in ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North. Collection of Paul and Rhonda Gerson © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

Digression: 1930s posters

As I processed all these images of the human form simplified down to stylised silhouettes with the heavy use of shading and often multiple outlines as if echoing or mirroring the central one, plus the use of slogans or good causes – I knew I’d seen something similar before. It took me a while to realise they were reminding me of a certain type of poster from the 1930s, generally depicting armed struggle, the classical examples being from the Spanish Civil War, but sometimes Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR.

It tickled me that these images of muscle-bound, toxic male warriors are pretty much the last thing in the world Chicago would want to be associated with, but hopefully you can see the stylistic similarities. Not suggesting any kind of indebtedness, just the visual similarity.

Snapshot from Google Images showing cartoon figures relying on strong outlines, shadow, ‘echoes’ of silhouettes and simple colour palettes

What if women ruled the world?

The exhibition builds up to a finale in the very big, interactive and collaborative piece, ‘What if women ruled the world?’

The main product of this is a massive quilted banner covered in images and text, lots of text. It was a highly collaborative piece. Chicago formulated 10 or so ancillary questions to the main central one, such as [if women ruled the world] ‘Would men and women be equal?’, ‘Would buildings resemble wombs?’ and so on.

Rather mind-bogglingly the first person to answer all 11 questions ‘during a call to action at the ICA Miami in December 2022’ was Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the all-women Russian punk band, Pussy Riot. Her prompt and enthusiastic response resulted in her being recruited by Chicago, an inveterate collaborator, in this new project.

In the end thousands of people replied, from all round the world, and these responses were ‘digitally threaded’ together to create the finished tapestry. Here’s my photo of it in the Serpentine which shows how it is made out of panels. At the centre sits an embroidered portrait-shaped rectangle containing the master question. If you look closely you can see how scattered around the rest of the quilt are long narrow ‘letterbox’ panels, which contain the 10 ancillary questions. And all the rest of the quilt is made up of smaller, letter-shaped panels containing answers contributed by respondents around the world, most of whom are represented by photos of themselves.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘What if women ruled the world?’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

You can see it in more detail, read more and watch the video, on the dedicated What if women ruled the world? website. (If you hover your cursor over the main image of the quilt it magnifies the individual panels so you can read the contributions and comments woven into it).

The exhibition here at the Serpentine includes, next to the main quilt, a set of decorated prints of each of the questions written out in Chicago’s attractive, cursive script.

A last-minute change

And with that you have completed your tour of the exhibition – laid out in Serpentine’s usual four long narrow galleries and 2 walk-through alcoves – and have arrived back at the massive frieze depicting her mythological depiction of the Female Goddess giving birth to the universe, which greeted us as we walked in the door.

But there is one last wrinkle. On the wall next to the quilt, Chicago has created a piece specially for this show. It uses what had, by the 1980s become her characteristic rainbow palette, using her trademark Prismacolor pens, across which is written a text in her (just as characteristic) cursive hand saying: ‘And God Created Life.’

Beneath this is a normal-sized print depicting God as a hermaphrodite, displaying the primary and secondary characteristics of both a woman and a man (i.e. a vulva and a penis).

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘And God Created Life?’ (2023) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

What??? Right next door is the huge frieze saying that God is a woman and created the universe using female techniques, body parts and substances (breast milk becoming rivers etc) and asserting that the fundamental act of creation, suppressed by millennia of patriarchy, is the unique ability of women to give birth. God. Woman. Universe.

But now, according to the curators:

Foregrounding a shift in the artist’s perspective from an inherently female position to an all-encompassing view, the exhibition culminates in ‘And God Created Life’ (2023). This is Chicago’s most recent work included in the exhibition and calls for an expanded and inclusive concept of God, one that is neither distinctly male or female.

Here, right on the very last wall, as it were on the last page of the book, in the last frame of the movie, with no further explanation, Chicago appears to revise and contradict pretty much everything the entire previous 50 years of her art was premised on. After spending 40 years telling us God is a woman now she’s telling us that…maybe our religious thinking should transcend the simplistic binary of male or female, for something less divisive and more inclusive…

It’s a weird curveball to throw right at the very end of the entire show and begs loads of questions which remain completely unanswered.

If you like vexatious questions about feminist mythology, God and the universe you can go away and worry about this puzzling turn of events at length. Or if, like me, you like pretty pictures and enjoy seeing how an artist’s style and ideas change and develop over time, then this a stimulating, often very beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes a bit meh, but always interesting exhibition – with a mysterious sting in the tail!

‘And God Created Life’ by Judy Chicago (2023) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Photo: © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York. Courtesy of the artist

And like all the shows at the two Serpentine galleries – it’s FREE! Go and enjoy, be inspired and, maybe, a little puzzled.

Related links

Other London exhibitions which featured Chicago

More Serpentine reviews

Feminist reviews

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by Simon on May 25, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in America, Art, Exhibition, Feminism
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Posted by Simon on May 25, 2024

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/05/25/revelations-judy-chicago-serpentine-north/

Relating to animals @ the British Museum

Room 24

Room 24 at the British Museum is a large open gallery at the junction between the huge covered courtyard and the back of the museum. It’s a kind of portmanteau room titled ‘Living and Dying’, bringing together displays from around the world to consider how these fundamental aspects of human existence vary from place to place, and people to people. So, for example, this room has a big display of Australian Aboriginal art (which I’ve described in another blog post) and another display about Inuit peoples.

Relatively new is the display about ‘Relating to animals’ which looks at some aspects of life among people in Amazonia. I’m going to more or less quote the wall labels along with my own photos of the artefacts.

Amazonian apron from Peru, 1920s, made from feathers and beetle tissue. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Amazonia

Amazonia spans nine countries in South America and is made up of tropical rainforests and savannas. This display shows contemporary and traditional artworks from across the region.

For many Amazonian communities, animals and people are fundamentally interconnected with their environment. This relationship is reflected in microcosms such as the veins in leaves, and in macrocosms, such as the constellations of the stars.

The artefacts on display reveal different ideas about the world and ways of living with the environment that have endured colonisation. These concepts today are communicated through a wide range of art forms.

Indigenous art has traditionally been associated with local craft and folklore, but many Amazonian artists also participate in global circles. In this way the indigenous knowledge expressed in their art works reaches beyond local communities to an international audience.

The display arises from work by the British Museum’s Santo Domingo Centre which builds relationships with heritage-related projects in Latin America.

Cubeo barkcloth

Costumes like these were worn by Cubeo people from the Tukano region for the onye or ‘weeping’ dance. After the death of a community member these masks were worn to disguise the dancer as animals and insects or eggs and larvae. The ceremony marks the transition between the worlds of the living and the dead as well as the importance of rebirth and regeneration. These dances are no longer practiced anywhere in Amazonia.

Cubeo barkcloth costumes (1960s, 1970s) © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

The power of feathers

Feathers can be used to enable people with special ritual and intellectual knowledge to transform into birds. These clothes might have been worn for ceremonies celebrating this transformation.

According to traditional knowledge there are many ways in which people can acquire the ability to move through space and time and so heal and shape their community’s experience of the world. One way of doing this is to transform into a bird and transition between spatial dimensions. This usually involves dream states and powerful plants.

Apron

An apron from Jivaro, Ecuador, made in the 1960s from feathers, bark and bird tissue.

Apron from Jivaro, Ecuador, 1960s © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Head dress

Head dress from Brazil, made in the 1860s from feathers and plant fibres.

Head dress from Brazil, 1860s © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Back ornament

A back ornament from Jivaro, Ecuador, made in the 1960s from feathers, seeds, bird and beetle tissue.

Back ornament from Jivaro, Ecuador, 1960s © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Feather hammock

Europeans settled in many parts of Amazonia from the 1670s onwards. An increase in demand for feather-work led Amazonian people to invent new techniques and styles of production to cater for foreign tastes. For example, the natural colour of the feathers was modified and the design began to incorporate European-style floral motifs and coats of arms. This hammock was made specifically for a foreign collector.

Feather hammock (1910s) Unknown artist, Iquitos, Peru © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Contemporary Amazonian art: A story of the fish people

According to the oral histories of the Tukano people from northern Amazonia, humans originated from a journey on the serpent canoe of transformation. These narratives describe worlds in which people and animals can transform into each other and where time can alter dramatically.

This set of 12 watercolours are by Tukano Desano artist Feliciano Lana and they depict just such an origin story. Unlike most stories Lana’s narrative does not take place at on particular time – the events happen in both the present and the past. This temporal disorder is echoed in the story where time is experienced in radically different ways in the two worlds which Lana describes.

Installation view of ‘A story of the fish people’ by Feliciano Lana (2019) © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Here are two episodes in close-up, numbers 5 and 8. In number 5, at the top, shows the protagonist of the story, a fisherman, locked in a dark room and ordered to climb on top of a giant fish before many tucuxis or dwarves come in and tell him to escape.

Installation view of ‘A story of the fish people’ by Feliciano Lana (2019) showing numbers 5 and 8 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

In number 8, at the bottom, a woman has told the fisherman to collect water from the river, at a specific place marked by a big stick. But when he gets there he discovers the stick is actually a big snake but he is the only one who can see it. When he returned empty handed the woman sent him back. This time he was able to climb on the back of the snake and so collect the water.

Summary

Room 24 is big, busy and confusing. In the centre are crowds walking from the main courtyard towards the back of the building, as well as all those taking the steps down to, or back up from, the Africa rooms downstairs. So it’s easy to blink and miss relatively small and niche displays like this. So, here it is for your enjoyment.

Related links

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by Simon on April 5, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Exhibition, Latin America
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Posted by Simon on April 5, 2024

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/04/05/relating-to-animals-the-british-museum/

Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River @ Japan House

This is a beautifully designed and laid out, quietly civilised exhibition about a tiny and little-known group of people and their culture, the Ainu people of northern Japan. It brings together over 200 objects, many never seen outside Japan before, and is structured around four themes: language, song and dance; woodcarving, textiles and food; environmental issue; and religion and belief.

Installation view of ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

The Ainu

The Ainu are an indigenous people who have been living in northern Japan, especially Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture of Japan, and the surrounding islands, since at least the 13th century (hence the map of Hokkaido in the stand in the photo above, and also printed on the floor).

Historically, they have suffered discrimination and marginalisation. According to Wikipedia:

During the era of Samurai in Japan, Ainus had to grovel and smear their face on soil when they met a Japanese soldier, or face immediate decapitation. Ainu were not allowed to hunt for food, speak Ainu, or obtain an education, being forcefully segregated in small villages.

Although most Ainu continue to live in Hokkaido some have migrated to other parts of Japan. Estimates vary but it is thought that the total Ainu population of Japan numbers in just the tens of thousands. At one point it seemed as if the Ainu language (which is distinct from Japanese) and culture would disappear entirely.

In recent years, however, Ainu culture has undergone a conscious revival. During the 1960s and 1970s Kayano Shigeru, who was born in 1926 in the small village of Nibutani in Hokkaido’s Biratori area, and was the first Ainu to sit in Japan’s parliament, inspired a movement to celebrate, sustain and develop this distinct and lesser known of the Japanese cultures. This movement continues to gather momentum today, in particular among younger members of the Ainu community in Nibutani.

Display of bark fabric clothes in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

Biratori and Nibutani

Biratori is an area located in the Saru River basin in the south of Hokkaido. Nibutani is a rural community of just over 300 people within Biratori Town, a municipal area with a population of around 4,600. Of the 300 inhabitants of Nibutani some 70 to 80% are of Ainu descent. This makes it the place in Japan with the highest percentage of Ainu residents. So compared with Japan’s population of 126 million we are talking tiny, tiny numbers.

And this is why this exhibition focuses on this town, its Ainu people and rural surroundings. An important aspect of the exhibition is that it has been curated in collaboration with the people of Biratori. Simon Wright, Director of Programming for Japan House London, points out that: ‘Many, if not all, exhibitions of Ainu culture in museums have focused on the past. Displays are often made up of old ethnographic collections. This exhibition, with a range of materials made especially for this project, aims to be different. For this venture, at Japan House London we want to show how Ainu culture in the rural district of Biratori is expressed today.’

The emphasis is on the ongoing life and viability of the culture, as practiced by people alive now, who have made objects and been interviewed expressly for this exhibition.

Kaizawa Yukiko weaving bark-cloth for attus as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Ogawa Masaki

Twelve videos

The one-room gallery is lines by twelve large video screens, on which appear interviews with living practitioners of Ainu arts and crafts, language and religion. The interviews are interspersed with shot of the idyllic scenery of the Saru River region which makes it look stunningly beautiful. The rugged river and northern landscape and especially the many woodcarvings of wild bears catching salmon made me think of Canada (well, images of Canada I’ve seen on TV).

Wood carvings of wild bears catching salmon as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

The topics of the videos are:

  1. Nibutani Ainu food culture (interviewee: Oikawa Naomi)
  2. Tourism and a new identity (Kaizawa Tōru)
  3. Ainu woodcarving (Hiramura Daiki)
  4. Teaching the next generation building techniques (Ozaki Tsuyoshi)
  5. Attus weaving (Kaizawa Yukiko)
  6. The importance of local knowledge (Nagano Tamaki)
  7. Singing as a part of everyday life (Harada Rino)
  8. Ainu spirituality (Monbetsu Atsushi)
  9. Ainu language (Sekine Kenji)
  10. A sustainable forest for the future (Kimura Misaki)
  11. Ainu culture matters (Kayano Kimihiro)
  12. Living off the land (Kaizawa Taichi)

In addition there are six smaller video screens dotted around the show with films concentrating on specific themes and topics.

Ainu language

Ainu language is distinct from Japanese. It has mostly been passed down orally with the result that versions of it vary by region. For most of its history it was never written down and only recently have adapted versions of the Japanese and Latin alphabets been used to record it.

The Ainu language is listed as critically endangered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This means that while it is not extinct, the last native speakers are dying out and only conscious efforts by the community and the authorities are going to keep it alive. The primary school in the featured town of Nibutani devotes more time to teaching its pupils Ainu than any other school in Japan.

The exhibition allows visitors to hear Ainu people speaking their own language and see some of the learning materials used to teach the language. In January there will be live in-person lessons from native Ainu speakers.

Pack of picture cards use to teach the Ainu language to children as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

The environment

This section touches on topics of environmental conservation, contemporary agricultural practices, the largely unknown world of Ainu cuisine and the consultation with members of the Ainu community on major land construction projects such as the recently completed Biratori Dam.

Iwor is the Ainu term for the natural environment which sustains the Ainu way of life. Since 2008 the Iwor Restoration Project has been preserving or restoring habitats required for Ainu culture, such as the bullrushes used in traditional home building (cise), the creation of attus bark cloth, areas for the wild plants necessary for traditional medicine, and the cultivation of traditional crops such as millet and beans.

The cooking implements carved from wood are beautiful. There’s wall labels explaining the staples of Ainu cuisine, samples of spices and dried foods, and a video showing Ainu dishes being cooked. These include soups (ohaw) starting with wild onion and then including meat from salmon, deer or wild bear; Rataskep which are simmered and reduced dishes containing beans or potatoes; sito which are dumplings made from glutinous millet. It all looked rich and strange and mouth-watering.

Cooking implements and ingredients of Ainu cuisine, with one of the 12 videos in the background, as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

I was touched to learn that one of the fundamental etiquettes of Ainu food culture is to only take what you need, thus, when harvesting mountain vegetables, to leave the roots intact.

Ainu textiles, song and dance

Videos show traditional Ainu dance with interviewees explaining their religious and community significance. The show features richly embroidered robes worn for certain ceremonies. I was staggered to learn that they make clothes not out of wool or cotton but out of peeled bark or attus which is painstakingly separated into individual fibres by hand to create ‘bark cloth’ before being woven into bright attractive costumes.

Woodcarving and tourism

Japanese domestic tourism in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the growth of the Ainu woodcarving industry in Nibutani, an area which was already famed for its delicately carved wooden trays, household utensils and hunting weapons. The exhibition includes Nibutani attus (woven bark textiles) along with Nibutani ita (carved trays). These latter are carved from walnut wood decorated with Ainu patters such as spirals (morew), thorns (ayus), eye shapes (sik) and fish scales (ram-ram).

Hand carved bowls and platters along with traditional carving tools as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

Ainu religion

Ainu religious ceremonies evolved as ways of preserving order in the world. There are no priests in the Ainu belief system, instead rituals are carried out by representatives chosen from community leaders. Participants were Ainu robes and make offerings of inaw (hand-carved sticks with wood shavings) to various kamuy (Ainu spirit deities) who are called on for protection, food and good health. There are good, troublesome or indifferent kamuy but all demand respect.

Monbetsu Atsushi in traditional ceremonial dress as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House

The Ainu belief system is rooted in the notion that alongside the world of humans (aynu) there is another world where the kamuy live in human form. In the human world kamuy can exists as plants or animals. Certain ceremonies enable messages to be sent by humans to the kamuy.

When an animal that embodies a particular kamuy, such as a bear, salmon or owl, was caught, its spirit (or ramat) was sent home to the world of kamuy with a prescribed ceremony, leaving its physical form behind as a gift to the humans.

These kamuy sent back with ceremonial gifts to the world of the kamuy would then come back again to the world of humans. When living things die, ramat leaves them and can be found everywhere and indicates the ongoing interconnection between Ainu and the natural world.

Links with Britain

I associate British imperial activity with Africa, India and south-east Asia so I was surprised to discover that some of the key figures in the preservation and promotion of Ainu culture were British.

John Batchelor (1855 to 1944)

Missionary John Batchelor from East Sussex lived and worked with the Ainu community for many years during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became a fierce advocate for their culture and way of life. Batchelor published the first texts about Ainu language in English, including the first Ainu-English dictionary in 1905.

Isabella Bird (1831 to 1904)

Bird was an English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist. She was the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The exhibition describes her travelogues whose northernmost point of travel within Japan was Biratori, where she stayed with the local community leader’s family and described their culture and practices.

Dr Neil Gordon Munro (1863 to 1942)

Dr Neil Gordon Munro was a Scottish physician and anthropologist. He lived in Japan for almost fifty years, from 1930 until his death living among the Ainu in Nibutani village in Hokkaido. He collected Ainu artifacts and authored many books including ‘Ainu Creed and Cult’ (with H Watanabe & B Z Seligman, 1962). But it was his faithful services as a physician to the Ainu people which earned him the love and respect of the Ainu population. According to the preface to his Ainu book:

‘He kept open house for all who came there to gossip, sing songs, tell legends and talk of past times. He was thus acquainted with a number of elders (ekashi) who became his regular informants, and to whom he referred as his elders and teachers.’

Film footage he took of the local people survives as well as the artifacts he sent back to the British Museum, National Museum of Scotland and Pitt Rivers Museum.

Events

The exhibition is complemented by an extensive programme of events covering Ainu dance, language, cuisine, policy and craft, ranging in format from talks and demonstrations to workshops and storytelling, which continue in the new year.

Charming carved figurines as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat

The film

There are also free public screenings of an 80-minute long documentary film ‘Ainu – Indigenous People from Japan’ (2019) by director Mizoguchi Naomi. Filmed in Biratori, the film follows the everyday life of four elder members of the resident Ainu community: Kawanano Kazunobu, Kayano Reiko, Nabesawa Tamotsu and Kibata Sachiko.

All four were born in the 1930s and grew up as Ainu but were not taught the language by their parents and grandparents due to the suppression of Ainu identity at that time. After shifts in sensibility starting in the 1960s, they have been able to reconnect with their heritage and became active local leaders to help revitalise their language and culture.

After the first screening there was a panel discussion with contributions from the film director and members of the Ainu community of Biratori, which is available to watch online, link below.

Thoughts

Beautiful. Fascinating. Inspiring.

Related links

Reviews of other Japan House exhibitions

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Posted by Simon on January 4, 2024

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WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade @ Japan House

WOW is a visual arts studio based in Tokyo and Sendai, Japan. Their aim is ‘to reach beyond the boundaries of motion graphics, presenting installations which raise questions of how we interpret and express the modern world.’

WOW has been involved in a wide field of design work, including advertising and commercial works for brands including Sony, Suntory, Aston Martin, Dior, Chandon, Pokémon, Issey Miyake and Shiseido.

Until the end of March, Japan House in High Street Kensington is home to two installations by WOW studios, amounting to the company’s first UK solo exhibition.

Both installations are in the downstairs gallery space (although there is a display of the carved wooden dolls filling Japan House’s shop windows) and both are completely FREE. The one large gallery space has been partitioned in two.

POPPO – part of the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW

Room 1 – Tokyo Light Odyssey

You walk through curtains into a pitch-black space with curved walls shaped like a teardrop – you’ve walked into the pointed end and the walls curve away from you and then form a half circle at the far end, about ten yards way.

Onto the walls on both sides of you and facing you, in one seamless image, is projected a fantastic, five-and-a-half-minute long, 360-degree journey through Japan’s capital city by night. Remember the space travel ending of 2001 A Space Odyssey, or any footage you’ve seen of cars driving at speed through cityscapes? It’s like that, only better, and totally immersive. A lot of artists talk about immersive but this is a genuinely sensaround film experience.

Still from the Tokyo Light Odyssey installation at the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW

The ‘camera’ moves seamlessly through the neon lights of a subway station, which morph into the lights of convenience stores, then down into a tube train of the Yamanote Line, moving forwards over the head of the strap-hangars then the camera’s point of view swivels through 180 degrees so it’s travelling back the way it came then bursts free of the train to fly through the night sky between skyscrapers which change shape as in a kaleidoscope before shooting through the window of a hotel, across a room, through a door and then through a sequence of corridors of numerous ‘capsule’ hotels, pausing for a view of the iconic Tokyo Tower which changes and distorts before your eyes and then shooting forward to confront a vision of the world as one watery orb on which a series of illuminated ocean liners are railing, before flying past their lit portholes.

Wow, indeed. The five minutes pass in a flash. I loved it so much I watched it three times, the third time actively walking round the room-sized space, experimenting on my own perception as I walked either towards or backwards away from the fast-moving imagery, adding a further level of dizziness to the vertiginous visual journey. It’s brilliant.

Room 2 – POPPO

The second room is a more conventional display, with a range of objects and few interactive activities. It introduces us to the wooden folk craft of Tohoku – a region in the north east of Japan damaged by the large scale 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There are three main parts to POPPO.

This digital display includes three different installations focusing on kokeshi – wooden dolls – and poppo – the popular word for small carved wooden toys.

Poppo woods

In the POPPO Woods section there is a wall where people (mainly children) can place magnetic ‘tree segments’ against the wall, and after they’ve built their tree stump, digital birds will come and land on them.

A child places a magnetic mat against the Poppo Woods projected graphic in order to build a tree which an animated bird will then come and land on, at WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW

The birds are native to Tohoku and there’s a display of half a dozen sweet, non-digital, carved birds, explaining that each one has a symbolic meaning, for example the hawk is an image of business success and prosperity, the owl is an image of happiness and good fortune, the wagtail a sign of fertility (!)

Bird poppo, small, hand-carved wooden toys made in the Tōhoku region of Japan, at WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Photo by the author

Rokuro

In the second part, Rokuro, visitors are presented with a couple of digital screens. The screen prompts you to activate it and then a computer animation of a circular piece of wood appears spinning at high speed on a lathe. By touching the screen, you decide where the lathe-cutting instrument interacts with the spinning wood pole, carving rings into it – these can be deep or shallow, wide or narrow, just one or many. And so you carve your own digital kokeshi, or wooden doll.

After thirty seconds the process is complete and the program automatically colours in the curved shape you’ve made and then it appears on the wall-sized computer-generated screen behind the little screens, a wall-sized projected gallery of all the carvings visitors have made to the exhibition so far.

A child uses an interactive screen to ‘carve’ a kokeshi doll, which will then be coloured and appear on the shelves full of similar dolls projected on the wall. Part of WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW

Yadoru

In the final part, Yadoru, there are 130 unpainted kokeshi dolls which have the faces of 130 Tohoku residents (pulling a variety of faces) projected on to them. The body of the dolls are imbued with ‘auspicious meaning’ and have been decorated using designs from a veteran Japanese kokeshi maker based in Zao Onsen.

Some of the 130 kokeshi dolls with real faces projected onto them at the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London

To one side of this display is a screen and chair. You sit and line up your face with the cam above the screen, as in a passport photo machine, get is just so and click the button. The computer saves the image of your face and any silly expression you were making, then projects it onto the blank face of one of the half dozen dolls in a special display away from the main collection…. So that you have projected your own face onto the kokeshi to create their own unique doll.

Project your own face onto a kokeshi doll in the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London

It’s not an academic exhibition. It’s a small, fun, interactive display and, as the photos with kids suggest, it is probably one for people with kids below the age of about 11. But if you’re an adult with an interest in Japanese crafts, or know enough to be interested in kokeshi dolls, then it’s for you, too.

Related links

Other exhibitions at Japan House

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by Simon on January 12, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on January 12, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/wow-city-lights-japan-house/