Motoyuki Shitamichi launched his Torii project in 2006. He proceeded to visit and photograph torii that are situated outside Japan’s current national border. Expansionist Japan constructed numerous torii during its occupation of the Northern Mariana Islands (now a U. S. territory), Northeast China (former Manchuria), Taiwan, South Korea, and Sakhalin (the eastern most area of Russia).
The black-and-white projection, Araf by Didem Pekün, begins, as a lithe man stands high up in the middle of the grand, rebuilt 16th-century Ottoman bridge in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In very slow motion, he soars through the air like a bird in a graceful dive. We never see him land.
The installation Hey Daddy, Hey Brother comprises a series of “Sukajan” jackets, which Tamura collected over a period of several years. They were a popular souvenir among the US military stations in postwar Japan during the Korean War (1950-1953). With origins rooted in military occupation of in the East Asia region, the jackets fuse the American “bomber,” or baseball jacket, with traditional hand-stitched designs of Japanese iconography, including dragons, tigers, Mt.
Yuichiro Tamura works in a wide range of media including video, photography, installation and performance...
After graduating from Musashino Art University in 2001, Shitamichi traveled for four years throughout Japan and took photographs of war remains...