Large Heart No. 49 (Rasen Kaigan series)
2009 - Photography (Photography)
120 x 180 cm
Lieko Shiga
Lieko Shiga’s photographs appear like dreamscapes. They gain much of their visual power from the unusual interplay between light and color, and the way in which her motifs often seem to defy physical laws such as gravity. She often photographs nocturnal landscapes that are both enchanted and haunted, invoking an emotionally and psychologically complex, contemporary inner landscape, as well as the ancient relations between mysticism, spirituality, and folklore, specifically invoking Japanese traditions and beliefs, while at the same time transforming them. The series Rasen Kaigan was created together with residents of the coastal town Kitakami in Japan’s Tohoku region. This area was severely affected by the tsunami in 2011. Over the course of four years, Shiga acted as the city’s official photographer. The works in this series do not portray the disaster in any way, but rather explore a different kind of reality, in which the present exists only in dialogue with the past and with the spirits of the land. Unlike many other contemporary photographers, Shiga captures invisible realities while at the same time invoking the artistic legacies of Surrealism, Land art, sculpture, and experimental film. Her photos also recall earlier works such as Masatoshi Naito’s photographs of Japanese folklore. Shiga depicts the contemporaneous reality of the modern and the non-modern, and gives visual expression to this tense and complex condition, while also making us feel, while looking at her images, that we, as subjects of modernity, stand on unstable and, ultimately, haunted ground.
Based on an instinctive feeling of unease with the convenience and automation of daily life, Lieko Shiga has developed an artistic approach that links questions about the nature of the photographic medium with fundamental questions about life and the means of expressing oneself. The artist’s photographs integrate her personal experiences with grander mythologies turning them into surreal and fantastical scenarios. She also introduces streaks of light and energy trails to the surface of her images, facilitating and revealing an even greater intrusion by the photographer. In the artist’s recent works, the documentary and the staged photography is actively combined in a very expressive mode, and she deploys technical tricks which often result in uncanny spiritual images. Though the works often have a haunting presence, the images reflect recent catastrophic experiences in Japanese society. There is a unique enchantment in her works, resonating with an unruly native spirituality, mysticism, and folklore, especially invoking Japanese traditions and beliefs, while transforming them at the same time.
