Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
Nobuyoshi Araki (Tokyo, 1940) is one of the most celebrated Japanese artists of our time. Ever since he started his photographic career in the mid-sixties, Araki has taken tens of thousands of photographs and published more than 475 photo books.
Araki completed his studies at Chiba University's Department of Photography, Painting and Engineering with a focus on the study of film and photography. His photographic project Satchin earned him the prestigious Taiyo Award in 1964, shortly after he had joined the advertising agency Dentsu, where he worked until 1972.
At Dentsu he met his wife Yoko, to whom he paid homage in Sentimental Journey, a photographic record of their honeymoon published in 1971. Eros and thanatos (sex and death) has been a central theme in Araki's work; an abiding fascination with female genitalia and women's bodies in Japanese bondage, flowers, food, his cat, faces and Tokyo street scenes. Only by distancing himself through his lense, keeping life at an arms length, the artist can truly approach reality and eventually reconcile life and death.
Araki was a recipient of the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Arts (Austrian Embassy, 2008) and the 54th Mainichi Art Award (2012).
Ocula Report Berlin, Boners and Brecht 7 Jun 2016 : Diana d'Arenberg for Ocula Apparently my timing sucks. One week too late for Berlin Gallery Weekend, and one month too early for the Berlin Biennale. ‘You should have been here last weekend for Berlin Gallery Weekend!’ a Berliner friend exclaimed. ‘Everyone was having orgies at Soho House! It was the best art world networking!’ I shifted...
Ocula Report Japan Focus: Three Tokyo Exhibitions 27 Nov 2014 : Becca Voelcker for Ocula I walk along Tokyo’s Ginza shopping street towards the basement art gallery of Shiseido’s store, where three series of recent works by renowned Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki are on display in Nobuyoshi Araki Ōjō Shashū: Photography for the Afterlife — EasternSky. It’s one of those autumn days when the clouds...
Ocula Conversation Stephen Mccoubrey Co-curator, UBS Art Collection, London With an extraordinary collection of paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and video by some of the world’s major artists from 1960 onwards, UBS is recognized as having one of the most important corporate collections of contemporary art in the world. Stephen McCoubrey has been co-curator of that collection since 1999 and is...
Related Press How Ed van der Elsken Influenced Other Artists The New York Times : 3 March 2017 Ed van der Elsken may not have become a household name, but his art has influenced a broad range of photographers, filmmakers and other contemporary artists. Here are three who expressed a direct connection to his art.Nan GoldinThe contemporary American photographer Nan Goldin, known for her deeply personal snapshot-like portraits, and her...
Related Press 'Masters of Japanese Photography': Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts ArtAsiaPacific : 22 February 2017 Photographs by three of Japan's most prolific living artists from the 20th century were recently on view in Masters of Japanese Photography, at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA) in Norwich, England. This was the first time Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Kikuji Kawada had their works displayed in the east of England, although all three...
Related Press Tokyo: photogenic to its very core The Japan Times : 14 December 2016 With Tokyo being the object of so many excellent photographers’ interest over the last 150 odd years, it’s entirely legitimate that the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum should be bringing it home. What’s on display in the first exhibition, displayed on the third floor, is a selection from the museum’s world-class permanent...
Related Press Eros, Life and Death: The photography of Japan's Nobuyoshi Araki at Musée Guimet, Paris Art Radar Journal : 19 August 2016 With over 400 photographs taken between 1965 and 2016, Araki is one of the most important and comprehensive surveys dedicated to the influential Japanese photographer.Launched on 13 April, Araki runs at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques–Guimet (MNAAG) in Paris until 5 September 2016, and marks one of the major...
