The Western modernization of Japan began in 1853 with the arrival of the American fleet under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry, and it is an understatement to say that the world has not been the same since. The Meiji Restoration that followed in 1868 brought about drastic changes throughout Japan that were characterized by the slogan “wakon yosai.” Roughly translated, this means “Japanese mind, Western things.” It referred to the Japanese acceptance of Western technology while simultaneously attempting to preserve the core aspects of Japanese attitudes, beliefs and culture.

Generally speaking, throughout the period of post-colonial expansion of Western culture, the Japanese have demonstrated an extreme adeptness at enculturating and improving upon the technological influences that were either intentionally borrowed or imposed upon them. Since the Meiji Restoration the Japanese people have had to work very hard to preserve their cultural identity and heritage, since it was only a matter of time before influences from Western popular culture began to be reinterpreted and filtered through Japanese traditions, finding their way into daily life. Conversely, however, Japanese customs and cultural influences have also greatly influenced the West.

One example of this cross-cultural adaptation within art history is the work of Katushika Hokusai (1760-1849), a famous Japanese painter and wood engraver who is best known for his iconic color woodcut in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled, “In the Hollow Wave off the Coast of at Kanagawa”, circa 1823-1829. While all of Hokusai’s work was executed shortly before the official beginning of the Meiji Restoration, his work directly influenced the work of Western artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, James Whistler and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Another example that was established in 1950’s is Dr. Osamu Tezuka’s Japanese interpretation of Western comics such as Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and the Disney film, Fantasia; these American influences eventually led Tezuka to found the modern day Manga movement within comics and print cartoons in Japan.

Born and raised in Tokyo and educated as a visual artist at the Chicago Art Institute, Ai Kijima similarly fuses influences from Eastern and Western cultures into new outcomes in quilted textile panels. By scouring garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores in Asia, Europe and North America, the artist gathers vintage domestic fabrics such as bed sheets, curtains, pillowcases, clothing, apron, handkerchiefs and tablecloths which she uses to create quilted, fabric collages that contain ironic and often seemingly incongruous juxtapositions of cultural, consumer and religious iconography that are, at their core, representative of a Japanese aesthetic. Kijima’s work straddles the divide between Japanese and American pop culture. The saturation and diversity of images in her work celebrate pluralism, mass media and rampant consumerism and portrays a world filled with contradictions.

Kijima often works in series with such titles as Erehwon, which is “nowhere” spelled backwards. In these works she portrays a landscape plane that is often filled with garish and periodic patterns. The foreground is crowded with cartoon and fantasy figures such as unicorns and rainbows interacting with characters excerpted from Disney films, Tezuka’s Manga comic books characters and classical children’s fairy tales, along with traditional images from historical Japanese paintings. Often in these pieces, the artist builds an intentional visual tension between several prominent images sourced equally from Anglo and Asian history and popular culture.

For example, in Erehwon 22, Katushika Hokusai’s wave image is prominent as the wave engulfs a horse. From the top left of the quilted tapestry, a monochromatic form that references the 1970’s, drips upon the image below, while in the top right, the textural pattern of snake skin infers a garish and somewhat tacky aesthetic of the American southwest, perhaps leading the viewer to think about cowboys and Texas. To the left edge of the quilt, several images of English-saddled horses with riders in traditional riding gear converse with one other on the polo field, as an English foxhound races off the edge. Images of several ringed planets looking very much like Saturn, infer a tear in the picture plane as a spaceship, seemingly from the Battlestar Galactica era, zooms out of Hokusai’s wave image into the foreground.

In summary, the work of Ai Kijima is an
amalgamation of a broad range of cultural influences that have become a symbolic representation of her life and experiences. Kijima is an artist who lives in a tenuous space of identity between American and Japanese culture; a person with a foot in two streams, where both worlds are filled with their own unique forms of rampant image saturation. She has embraced cultural pluralism, yet she remains an artist who strives to balance the notion of “wakon yosai.” For Kijima, the nature of her “Japanese mind” enables her to show us our “Western things” with a skeptical and observant eye.

Ai Kijima’s exhibition runs through October 18th at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery located at 20th W. 57th Street in New York. For more information contact the gallery at: http://www.franklinparrasch.com/