Poetry of absence - Interview between Asako Shiroki and David Elliott

To coincide with the opening of her solo exhibition The wind blows in, artist Asako Shiroki talks with independent curator and writer David Elliott. Asako Shiroki reflects on her journey so far, starting with jewelry making and exploring the structure and form of woodwork and objects. Here is a look at her journey leading up to her exhibition at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.

David: Asako, you started studying as an artist at Geidai [Tokyo University of the Arts] in the late 90s. How many years did you spend there?

Asako: I spent seven years studying, first as an undergraduate, then for a Master’s, and then a PhD degree; after that I taught there. So that makes it a total of 14 years!

David: Great, from a girl to a woman!!
Can you tell me what exactly you studied and what you did there?

Asako: The first course focused on jewelry-making, specifically silversmithing, but I really wanted to make sculpture. So, I tried to apply the knowledge and techniques I had learnt to make it – but these works were rather small in size. Indeed, I was very curious about what it was possible to make with silver but also wanted to test myself on what I could make. I needed a plan which I could then follow in order to create sculptural form.

David: Were your professors helping you in this exploration and process of self-development or were they only interested in the craft-making side?

Asako: There was one teacher who did focus on sculpture, but unfortunately, he retired soon after I joined. The others mainly focused on jewelry-making, and their instinct was to shift my focus from sculpture to jewelry – which was very disappointing. At the same time, this developed my interest in thinking about the nature of sculpture and its relation to other media – I was interested in how and what things happened to materials during the process of making a work and that is why I decided to change from working with metal to wood.

David: Did you see then a dichotomy between art and craft

Asako: All the students on this course were either furniture-makers or architects but, luckily, I was given the freedom to explore my own interest in making sculpture in wood and to make only what I believed in; this was fantastic. I only really learned how to make furniture when I started working as a teacher – at the same time as my students!

David: That was lucky! Indeed, in such a situation, you could have been penalized for making furniture that had no utilitarian purpose. Who was your enlightened professor?

Asako: Ikko Tanaka. He’s not so well-known as an artist but he’s a very interesting person. He used to make oil paintings when he was young but a fire destroyed his house and with it all his works. After this, he decided that it was better not to go back to painting and, at the same time, he was invited to become a Professor at Kyushu University and to oversee its woodworking course. This was a great surprise for him as it was the first time that he had ever worked with wood! So, his development was rather like mine.

David: It is fascinating to hear this story because my image of art education in Japan is that it’s rather rigid and discipline-bound, but you are describing a very fluid approach that shows a respect for creativity of many different kinds.

Asako: Well, only so much! In Japan at that time I would have never been defined as a sculptor, because of strict categorizations. If I had not graduated with a degree in Sculpture, I could never have said “I’m a sculptor”.

David: Let’s talk about the context in which you were learning at this time: were you aware of the discussions about form in sculpture that had been going on, particularly in the US during the early 1960s, among the so-called Minimalist artists who described their works as “non-specific objects” – not as sculptures which to them seemed reactionary and limiting. They used this term because they didn’t want their works to refer to, or describe, anything else; they were what they were and implied no representation or narrative. Were you influenced by any of this?

 Asako: Yes, of course I was interested in the minimalist movement but also in work made much closer to home such as that produced by the Japanese Mono-Ha group. At this time, I read and reflected a lot on the different languages of and relationships between material and space. In this respect the work of Lee Ufan was important for me. His identity lay between cultures – Japanese and Korean – and he also stood at many other borders.

David: Did any of the Mono-Ha artists come and lecture at the school?

Asako: Not really, but I set out to meet them myself.

David: Reflecting on all this, I guess that the courses at Geidai gave you the space in which to grow. Educators everywhere, if they are smart, realise that this space is vital for students and they can also add a few shakes of pepper into the mix – a push to help you along. That’s something we all need.

So, let’s now move on from your early development to talk about your works that I know….
I first encountered these when I was working on A Time for Dreams (the IV Moscow Biennale of Young Artists) in 2014. They obviously echoed traditional Japanese methods of woodwork and joinery, such as hozo-kumi (that sought to make connections without nails or glue), but I also thought that they were revisiting European modernist ideas of the 1930s in which the simplicity of a handmade object was enhanced and eventually displaced by machine-made prefabrication. I am thinking here of the work of the Bauhaus, the contemporary apotheosis of which can be seen in the furniture of IKEA. To some extent, your work then struck me as both a deconstruction and a sardonic comment on this history. Do you think that such connections are valid?

Asako: At this time, my works were very much influenced by the impact of the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake. I had then a show in Tokyo, but most of the works were smashed by the earthquake and the show had to be closed. This made me reflect more deeply on the fragility of objects and the meaning of this – anything can be broken. So, then I purposely tried to make my artworks more fragile by playing with gravity or balance. These ideas became very important for me between 2013 and 2014 when you first saw my work. But there are different aspects of my work which I have never shown you because they no longer existed, and my laptop was broken during the earthquake and all its data destroyed. This provided a good excuse, as well as a reason, because I also wanted to change. My old works were more solid, and I used glue to make the pieces more stable. I felt at that time that I was lying to myself.

David: So, it felt more honest, or necessary, to make work that had a new possibility – a fragility – but it was also about stretching out and expanding the space it occupied. In this contrast I sensed an edgy playfulness – I don’t know if humour is the quite the right word because it was also rather dark. Yes, I do think it had an edge of dark humour, something that many Japanese people actually relish.

Asako: Actually, for Japanese people, my work feels very normal in a way, but they don’t necessarily get the deeper meanings behind it.

David: Going back to what we were talking about before, in a way Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, is certainly supposed to have been very much interested in the wooden architecture of Japan, but then the other way around, here you are looking at the Bauhaus ideal that lies between sculpture and craftwork. They wanted to get rid of the idea that art was completely separate from a utilitarian use or function. Did this idea have any impact on you?

Asako: Yes, it did. I was also invited by the Bauhaus University in Weimar to hold a lecture for their students, and the teachers then visited my studio.

David: From the beginning, it seems to me that a “poetry of absence” has been present in your work – an absence of function and obvious purpose that questioned the role of human intervention. Do you think that people who look at your work become in fact part of it, or do they remain separate? Do such considerations influence you in making work? I mean, do you feel that it needs people to bring it alive?

Asako: Yes, the interaction of humans is necessary.

David: I was thinking particularly of Carl Andre’s objects. He says that they only make sense when people are standing inside his works in their space.

Asako: I don’t know if people who are standing in front of my works are looking at the artwork or at its absence in other parts of the space. I think that absence is the other side of form. Absence for me is trying to go back to memories that cannot be reached. It is like an accelerator and a brake at the same time.

David: This kind of poetic element within the work makes me think of haiku.

Asako: Yes. Actually, recently, I have been really curious about poets and poetry.

David: A Cabinet Unable to Hold any Secrets (2016) is the title of a new work shown in A Time for Dreams that I curated in Belgrade. Here, I feel that an element somewhere between absurdity and surrealism has been overtly introduced; it was much more quietly stated in the flows and disjunctures of your earlier objects. You are now using a wider range of forms and materials, some of which have symbolic associations. Do you see this as the main development in your work from its beginning?

Asako: The changes that I made then consisted of making the textile go through the structure and not through the door of the cabinet. This is similar to how plants grow up towards the sun by intertwining with supporting structures and other bodies.

David: There’s another work that you made around the same time, Liquid Path – Buoyancy and Dynamic (2017) there are deck chairs, found objects, “lucky stones” and a swathe of blue textile which seems to run, like water, through the work.

Asako: From this work I started to have interests from a number of events that existing together in this world, such as history, culture and customs, or poetry, literature, biology and the perception of flora and fauna. I expand my work from there.

David: You have said about A Twig of Interweaving Passages (2021), an installation shown in this current Daiwa Foundation exhibition, that it is a milestone in your journey between “rational collection” and “destined accumulation”. A fallen twig is a random object, even when you cast it in bronze. Is this what you mean, or has an element of chance or randomness now become a central part of your work?

Asako: Random things give me new ideas. I am not interested in representing my thoughts but rather find inspiration in something new that is outside my own thoughts. The function of this randomness is key to my works.

David: I think that when you started making your earlier work one thing led into another; you got so far with a work and then you found some fabric or some other material to add to it in a process of bricolage that added something from outside the system and represents another reality. Like in A Cabinet Unable to Hold any Secrets (2016), for instance. But there is also an enigmatic poetry in this work and I guess the broken ceramic wafers, which compose the fragments of a waxing or waning moon, that you have made just now, also express a kind of poetry that, for example, reminds me of Yoshitoshi’s series of ukiyo-e prints, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892).

Many congratulations on this exhibition. I’ve really enjoyed looking at your new work. And I’m very curious to see how the stardust, the singing birds, and the mirror reflecting the wind that you have conjured together here will all add into this new sense of poetry.
Thank you so much.

 

About the authors

Asako Shiroki (b. 1979, Tokyo) currently lives and works in Berlin and Tokyo. She completed her PhD in Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts and participated in the International Studio Program in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2013-2014). Her recent exhibitions include PLAY MUSEUM, Schmuck2, Glashagen Hof, Retschow, Germany (2021); A warm trail, M100, Odense, Denmark (2020); Your Voice, Echoed, Cultural Center of Belgrade Art Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia (2019); A room that grows buoyant, 21st DOMANI-The Art of Tomorrow, The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019); Neighborhood Seen through Art, Community Engagement Program, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2018); The Other Face of the Moon, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea(2017); The Pleasure of Love, 56th October Salon, Belgrade City Museum, Serbia (2016); Contiguous notes, Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin (2016); Expanding and condensing, Pola Museum Annex, Tokyo (2015); On the floor, Behind the window, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014); A Time for Dreams, the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, The Museum of Moscow, Russia (2014). She received the Cultural Centre of Belgrade Award (2016). Her catalogue On the Floor, Behind the Window was published by Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014).

David Elliott is a British art historian, curator, writer, and teacher, who has directed museums in Oxford (MoMA, 1976–1996), Stockholm (Moderna Museet, 1996–2001), Tokyo (Mori Art Museum, founding director 2001–2006), and Istanbul (Museum of Modern Art, 2007). He is currently Vice-Director and Senior Curator of the Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art (RMCA) in Guangzhou. He has been the artistic director of major biennales in Sydney (2010), Kyiv (2012), Moscow (2014), and Belgrade (2016), and has taught Art History/Museum Studies at the University of Oxford (1986–1996), National University of the Arts, Tokyo (2002–2006), Humboldt University, Berlin (Rudolf Arnheim Professor in the History of Art 2008), and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2008–2016).