Rieko Kokatsu (小勝禮子) , feminist

In 2013, due to my habit of going outside my comfort zone, I found myself in the odd position of having to review an exhibition of "feminist" art in Utsunomiya, a bit of a journey from Tokyo. Although I finally ended up going to see the exhibition, I initially decided to review it from the catalogue and by asking the curator, Rieko Kokatsu, a few questions by email. Instead of just answering my questions in good faith, however, Kokatsu turned out to be a feminist much more than a curator, and just blurted out a lot of hair-splitting gibberish that I decided not to refer to in my review, which you can read here.

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Liddell: Would you say that any exhibition of women artists is inherently political and that avoiding the politics of gender issues is unavoidable? Why is this so?

Kokatsu: [no comment]

Liddell: When an exhibition or artwork is political is there not a danger of the political dimension eclipsing the artistic side and the art work becoming burdened with an all-too-obvious message?

Kokatsu: [no comment]

Liddell: In the selection of artists and artworks have you tried to get a balance between art and politics? If, yes, how and in what way?

Kokatsu: These three questions seem to assume that “political” and “art” are opposing concepts. Like asking whether something is art or a political statement. Are you suggesting that works with strong political messages are not art, or have low artistic value? First, I must say it’s very unfortunate that Colin-san is critiquing this exhibition and the works in it after reading only the catalogue, without having seen the actual pieces, due to lack of time. Because art cannot be fully understood from printed materials alone. Why not visit the exhibition? It runs until the 24th, so please come see it before writing your article. Or, if you can’t visit, isn’t one option simply not to write the article? The works of Asian women artists (and often men as well) are frequently born out of the everyday social conditions or historical backgrounds around them. Rather than separating art from daily life in the Western art-view sense of “art for art’s sake” or art supremacism, this exhibition gathers works by artists who express thoughts rising up from within everyday life in the form of art. It is not trying to categorize and divide them into “this is political” and “this is artistic.” Regarding the Takamine Tadasu exhibition at Art Tower Mito, which your colleague at The Japan Times also introduced, are his works, which take post-Fukushima nuclear accident Japan as their theme, “political”? Not all the works in this exhibition are “political” in the way you describe. Artists like Kim Soo-ja, Chiharu Shiota, and Kumi Machida are not political at all in that sense. They universalize their own or other women’s daily lives through art. Lin Tianmiao, Lee Bul (likely referring to Lee Bul or similar; name as 이승경/Lee Seung-kyung?), Yoon Suk-nam, and Song Hyun-sook are also not political. They are simply expressing the difficulties or discomforts they face in living, taking the form of art. Could we please stop lumping all of these together as “gender issues” and viewing them as accusations against men in positions of superiority?

Liddell: The art in the exhibition seems to mainly critique the position of women, which is a kind of social critique that exonerates women from guilt or responsibility for social evils. A simple example is Mao Ishikawa's photography, which can be read as a critique of the social evil of prostitution. But what about art that critiques women themselves? I feel that not just society (implicitly male) needs to be critiqued but also women themselves. Prostitution is a social evil but the prostitutes are also women who choose to fulfil this degrading role. Why is there not more art that blames women for what they are or how they are? Or would you disagree with this statement. Why?

Kokatsu: Fundamentally, your misunderstanding is that Mao Ishikawa is not portraying the Filipina women working in American bars as examples of "prostitution," or what you call "social vice." Mao Ishikawa herself worked in American bars, but she was not a prostitute—she worked as a bar woman. Isn't equating "bar women = prostitution" extremely simplistic and reductive? Many of these women have American boyfriends, and some even marry them, but aren't those personal relationships? In the latter part of your text, it sounded to me as though you were saying that the women themselves should bear responsibility for this social vice of prostitution—but is that just my poor understanding of English? If that's what I read correctly, then I'm afraid your interpretation of this exhibition and of Mao Ishikawa's work is completely off the mark. Mao Ishikawa is not denouncing the society that produces prostitution around military bases. She is expressing, with human empathy, the lives of women living around U.S. military bases in Okinawa, as well as the lives of those same women in their villages in the Philippines. Asian women have fought hard to win the right to express themselves amid various social constraints. As one of the curators, my wish is that people appreciate the diversity of these women's expressions, rather than reducing them to a single category of "political." There are incredibly diverse forms of expression in art by women. Please come and see them for yourself.