In 2003, a Sophie Calle retrospective titled “M’as-tu vue” (“Did you See Me?”) was organized by the Centre Pompidou which then travelled to the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany. A major exhibition entitled “A suivre” was held in 1991 at ARC / Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Exhibiting in Hong Kong at the same time is artist Makoto Aida, whose work has won critical acclaim for its paradoxical mix of bawdy populism and sophisticated reflection in depicting the state of contemporary Japan.
Since the late 1970s, Calle has merged image and narration in her work methodically organizing an unveiling of reality – her own and that of others, while allocating a controlled part of this reality to chance. Renowned French conceptual artist, Sophie Calle and Japanese contemporary artist Makoto Aida, will take center stage and speak together about their work and artistic practices with Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator of Mori Art Museum. Tokyo: ABC Shuppan Co., 1996.Evening Discussion with Artists SOPHIE CALLE, MAKOTO AIDA and MAMI KATAOKA, Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum Tokyo: ABC Shuppan Co., 1999.Īdolescence and Perversion. Tokyo: Graphic-sha Publishing Co., 2007.Īpt.Kubo-So#6. Aida is currently a part-time instructor in the Oil Painting Department of Tokyo University of the Arts.īeijing Behind the Art. He is an author of Mutant Hanako (comic), Adolescence and Perversion (novel), and Monument for Nothing (exhibition catalogue), among other publications. His most recent exhibitions include “Wallworks,” Yerba Buena Center of Arts, San Francisco (2009) 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2010) and “E-BAKA,” Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo (2010). Aida has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in and outside of Japan. He was initially trained in painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, but has since expanded his artistic range to include photography, sculpture, performance, installation art, urban design, and comic book and novel writing. Makoto Aida was born in Nigata prefecture, Japan, in 1965. The work treads a moral tightrope by referencing the politically charged figure and at the same time becomes a poignant satire of the pacifist and insular political environment of Japan. He becomes a lazy, sake-drinking old man who, in a drunken stupor, tells the viewer that he has quit being a terrorist and to stop looking for him. In this video shot in an amateurish style, not unlike videos taken by terrorists and sent to foreign media to announce their destructive acts, the artist impersonates the world’s most wanted terrorist in a hypothetical situation-hiding in Japan. Among the recurring themes in his oeuvre is war and nationalism. Single channel video, sound, 8 minutes, 14 secondsĪsia Society, New York: Promised Gift of Harold and Ruth Newman.Ī prominent artist in contemporary Japanese art since the 1990s, Makoto Aida has dealt with subjects considered taboo for many Japanese. The Video from a Man Calling Himself Bin Laden Staying in Japan, 2005