Hafu: on in-betweenness
I went down to London last night for the private view (a UK term not really used in Australia, where "opening night" or "launch" seems to be preferred) of this exhibition: Hafu / Half Japanese. It's an intriguing concept: an exploration of appearance, identity, and culture among those who share Japanese ethnicity / cultural background, but for whom "Japaneseness" is only one part of their identity. The exhibition is based on a series of photographic portraits of a group of otherwise unrelated individuals, who happen to share the identity of "Hafu". Each person photographed was also interviewed by a researcher, Marcia Yumi Lise. A short programme of cultural events, including a seminar, accompanies the exhibition, and aims to reach out to the wider "Hafu" community in London.
The exhibition represents the culmination of a long project, with which I was peripherally involved, in its early stages - I think I posted on it once before. So I'm really pleased to see it come to fruition. Previously, the artist and I applied for funding to one charitable organisation with links to the Japanese community in the UK, and we sought exhibition space in Cambridge from a similar organisation. Our initial funding application wasn't successful, although we didn't receive any feedback as to why, but the exhibition space we approached gently indicated to us that the topic could be considered highly controversial, even offensive - although they didn't reject the concept out of hand. I knew that race, ethnicity, and cultural identity are politicised topics in Japan, but hadn't expected them to hold such explosive power in the UK. At the exhibition evening, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no hint of this, and the mood among the (diverse) crowd was warmly supportive.
In the event, I felt the exhibition was perhaps less about "Japaneseness" than it was about globalisation, and especially, how the circulation of images through global media helps to create -- and also to dismantle -- popular stereotypes and ideas about race, identity, and cultural belonging. Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements" ("English Traits"). Or you could read it as a contemporary instance of a rather 18th-century interest in physiognomy and family resemblance, in the tradition of David Piper's academic study "The English Face", and now frequently revisited in popular tv programs such as "Who Do You Think You Are?".
The exhibition represents the culmination of a long project, with which I was peripherally involved, in its early stages - I think I posted on it once before. So I'm really pleased to see it come to fruition. Previously, the artist and I applied for funding to one charitable organisation with links to the Japanese community in the UK, and we sought exhibition space in Cambridge from a similar organisation. Our initial funding application wasn't successful, although we didn't receive any feedback as to why, but the exhibition space we approached gently indicated to us that the topic could be considered highly controversial, even offensive - although they didn't reject the concept out of hand. I knew that race, ethnicity, and cultural identity are politicised topics in Japan, but hadn't expected them to hold such explosive power in the UK. At the exhibition evening, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no hint of this, and the mood among the (diverse) crowd was warmly supportive.
In the event, I felt the exhibition was perhaps less about "Japaneseness" than it was about globalisation, and especially, how the circulation of images through global media helps to create -- and also to dismantle -- popular stereotypes and ideas about race, identity, and cultural belonging. Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements" ("English Traits"). Or you could read it as a contemporary instance of a rather 18th-century interest in physiognomy and family resemblance, in the tradition of David Piper's academic study "The English Face", and now frequently revisited in popular tv programs such as "Who Do You Think You Are?".