La Toilette
Photo by Takashi Fujikawa
※Photos are for reference only.
Main Gallery Area Artist
The Weeping Woman
※Photos are for reference only.
Quail Rap(♀)
Photo by Alloposidae
※Photos are for reference only.
Self Documentary
Photo by Ujin Matsuo
※Photos are for reference only.
Artist Information
Mai Endo
1984 Born in Hyogo
2013 Tokyo University of the Arts, M.F.A., Painting
2015 “I Am a Feminist!” Gallery Barco (Tokyo,Japan)
2015 “I Am Pregnant With the Son of God.” TAV Gallery (Tokyo,Japan)
2016 “MOT Annual 2016 Loose Lips Save Ships”, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo,Japan)
2017 “history in art” pop up show at MKG,MAHO KUBOTA GALLERY (Tokyo,Japan)
2017 “I Am Not a Feminist!” Goethe-Institut Tokyo (Tokyo,Japan)
I have produced works using image of feminists in Japan. Using my own body, I deal with different media including theater play, lecture performance, music video and picture book. In a performance work using my own marriage contract, I Am Not a Feminist!(2017), I tried to transform the Japanese suppressed marriage system into a play. This video work quotes one of Edgar Degas La Toilette (1880 's~) series. In La Toilette series, he drawed repeatedly a woman who washes her body as a motif. Many of them are drawn by behind, people can't see their face. I entered this work, and represented as the model who was drawed. This work is not to be the painting situation, but to be closer present age situation by converting the viewpoint of the painter to the viewpoint of the camera and translating the remarks of Degas into contemporary phrases. When I translate the words left by the painter into contemporary Japanese, I found it is like a grumbling tweet that is posted on SNS, by whom I can not identify. While staying in a world with this tweet, I do not truly receive it, but I laugh and hear it.
Selector
Sociologist, Professor at Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
[Comment by Selector]
“I am a feminist!” “I am not a feminist!” This is the title of an artwork (exhibition and performance) Mai Endo has presented in the past. However, these seemingly conflicting declarations take on a complicated duality as her living body becomes incorporated into the work. Her performances seem to be the adaptation of herself into work and, at the same time, the conformation of work into her life. However, is it really possible to clearly divide real world and fictional performance, or life and art? If this work is feminist, it is only in the sense that it thoroughly dismantles such binaries.