"The Wings of Miwa Yanagi," the Translation of Special Issue On
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special issue Feature Interview The Wings of Miwa Yanagi Miwa Yanagi has wings, and she flies easily across the borders of different art genres. She majored in textile dyeing in her school years, but shifted to contemporary art, creating photography and video work using computer graphics. Since 2012, she has been also been a professor at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Kyoto University of Art and Design. The next place she landed at was theater. In the past four years, she has been organizing many plays based on modern Japan, as if excavating hidden voices of people buried in history. In 2014, she introduced the Taiwanese moving stage (stage trailer) to Japan for the first time. Together with students of Kyoto University of Art and Design, Tohoku University of Art & Design, and Taipei National University of the Arts, the moving stage they made in Taiwan will be “drifting” to various places after “landing ashore” at Yokohama Triennale. A pilgrimage and tour begins with “Wings of the Sun,” a road novel by the late novelist, Kenji Nakagami. Photography：Shen Chao-Liang What does this touring performance mean to her? The stage trailer unfolds and the stage appears. In Taiwan. As Miwa Yanagi is on a quest to find her ideal expression, we too chase after her as she continues to fly on the artistic stage. 1 2 make things using my hands. Being in the classical and traditional Departments of Crafts, I didn't know much about art when I was an undergraduate student. Of course, I was familiar with Dumb Type1 or Yayoi Kusama2, but I didn't quite understand the concept of contemporary art even if I visited an exhibition. In my third year, I began to take interest in theater and wanted to make theater costumes. I thought I would work as an apprentice with Emi Wada3, so I visited her with a letter of reference. Information City: Fountain Garden/ Woods of Shine/ Elevator 1996 C print Eventually, I was turned down. That was when I decided to go to So what made you go back to making artworks? What were your ideas behind Elevator Girls? graduate school. So graduate school was when I started learning about It was frustrating. I think the last thing you want to be is an art student I made a photography series of usher girls in my late twenties when I art. who has stopped making art. One day, on my way to work, I stopped by was mainly working and not making art. It was clearly representing Did you start your career as an artist right after graduation? at a convenience store in a suit that I hated wearing but had to. There, myself, acting to work in small offices and classrooms. Compared to There is a period of time after graduation when I didn’t create or At the venue of her first solo exhibition held simultaneously with her graduation exhibition. I met my classmate wearing a work suit, obviously because they were that, my next work, My Grandmothers, is a lot more open because I made exhibit anything. I had three different jobs, six days a week, and there busy working on their artwork, and I was super jealous…No, that's a it while communicating with the models. In my works, melancholy and What were you doing when you were 20 years old? were times when I had to work in all Keihanshin areas (Kyoto, Osaka, joke (laughs.) For me, the reason I started making art again was because emancipation, reason and chaos, appear in confrontation with each I was always in the university studio. Always. All I did was make art. Kobe) in the same day. It was hard making a living in my twenties, so I could see it from the outside. In the end, I rented a gallery and held other, so theater is a great medium for me. I was constantly working in the Fine Arts Building. I would go home I couldn't really create any artwork. I couldn’t store all the large works an exhibition, almost obsessively. It was performance art, not a picture, The “performance of smiling usher girls” from 20 years ago (see the on my scooter late at night, fall asleep, then go back to school as soon I made in university, so I had to throw almost all of them away at where a real life elevator girl sat still and smiled all day long. People lower right photo of the previous page) has recently restarted, and as I woke up and start working. Everyday was like this. It’s not that my graduation. around me must have been bewildered because I had been working in they appear in my recent plays as chorus5 or as supporting roles. How mind was focused only on making art, but because this was the only crafts all along. Well, people are still surprised now, since I’m started in these usher girls in symbolic uniforms without identity will speak, thing I knew. The university was located along the highway and there 1.Dumb Type An artist collective made up of memebers mainly from Kyoto City University of Arts, founded in 1984. theater all of the sudden (laughs.) and what they will speak about – it’s endlessly interesting. Explaining was nothing else around. We didn’t have Internet in those days, so I Members were trained in various fields such as architecture, art, music, and dance. Teiji Furuhashi, Shiro Takatani, Ryoji Ikeda are among the members. Was there a reason why you stopped working in crafts? contemporary art in a pre-modern form of storytelling, they are was totally isolated from information. In such environment, I was able 2.Yayoi Kusama (1929-) It’s because there was a time when stopped making art and worked. deconstructing in a most natural way, including their appearance. I wish to work only on things I liked. I had three solo exhibitions during my Yayoi Kusama works in various fields as a sculptor, painter and a novelist. After leaving the New York art scene, she is now based in Tokyo. Her exhibitions are held all over the world, including the Venice I studied traditional crafts until second year, and from fourth year, I I had them talking much earlier. Biennale, 1993. She is famous for her works using her signature poka dot pattern. school years, which was pretty rare in those days. I spent all the money was making large-scale installations using fiber4. Then I got caught up 3.Emi Wada (1937-) I earned working part-time making Kyo-yuzen dyed kimono for my Emi Wada is a costume designer born in Kyoto, Japan. She is the first Japanese woman to win an with this material I crated. I wasn't good with words, so I wasn't able Academy Award (Academy Award for Costume Design) for the Akira Kurosawa film, Ran. She also 4.Fiber art exhibitions. I didn’t do anything else, so I knew little about the world. makes costumes for foreign movies, plays, and operas. to develop my ideas, nor did I have the patience to persevere. After Works using fibers such as thread, cloth, rope, or plants as a material. But by holding solo exhibitions, and showing my works to other people, stalling for a while, I pulled myself away, got a job, worked for three 5.Chorus I came to know about myself. It was a very tough time when I suddenly Chorus is a choir in the plays of ancient Greece. They offered summary and explanation of the play to years, experiencing and observing society, then I came back. the audience and expressed what the main characters could not say. had my solo exhibition in Tokyo, but it also was a good experience since I got to know the state of contemporary art in Japan. Were your ideas in your school years related to the works you make now? One work always leads to another, so all I thought about was making the next work. It still is. But come to think of it now, the things I saw or read as a student are tied to what I do now. It’s all connected. Did you already have an interest in contemporary art while in university? At that time, I was attending Department of Crafts and I just wanted to White Casket, 1993 At the solo exhibition venue, women hold their smiles Midnight Awakening Dream (partly) 1999 C print 3 4 1. Grand Daughters Video Installation 2002 7. 1924 Tokyo-Berlin 2011 2. Little Red Riding Hood from Fairytale series 2004 8. Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose’s Last Tape 2013 3. HYONEE from My Grandmothers series 2004 9. 1924 Machine Man 2012 4. SHIZUKA from My Grandmothers series 2004 10. A poster of 1924 trilogy by Yanagi Miwa Theater Project 2011 5. Windswept Women Exhibited in Venice Biennale 2009 11. A poster of Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose’s Last Tape 2013 12. Railways from Panorama 2013 13. 1924 Sea Battle 2011 14. 1924 Machine Man 2012 10 15. A Poster of 1924 Machine Man 2012 13 7 1 2 3 8 14 11 4 5 9 15 12 You often use women in your pictures, but the main characters inseparable, and so it is with men and women. museums and theaters, although it’s difficult because the length of a primitive chaos, like at an open-air theater surrounded by natural in your plays are always men. Why is that? Is there a connection between you always changing the media history of each is so much different, I think it is easier to breathe phenomenon and various noises all coming together as one.