Thursday, November 25 at 6:00 pm (PST) // Friday, November 26 at 10:00 am (JST)
All ages, FREE
Location: ZOOM
Join us online with exhibiting artist UJINO and guest curator Makiko Hara for a special online screening of UJINO’s newest work, HOME MOVIE, and a conversation with the artist about his practice.
Born in 1964 and now living in Tokyo, Japan, UJINO grew up in the Tokyo suburb of Nerima, a neighbourhood established during the 1960s near one of many US Air Force bases in the area. The rapid westernization of his surrounding hometown became an important influence on his art practice. Through strategies of irony and critique, UJINO’s work addresses mass consumption and the ways imported western culture has been embraced in postwar Japan.
In 2004, UJINO began a series of large-scale sound sculptures and live performances with his invented band, the Rotators. The “band” is an automatic rhythm, dance, and industrial sound installation containing motor-driven electric appliances and mass-consumer household products including blenders, hair dryers, power drills, windshield wipers, electric guitars, and amplifiers. It is orchestrated by what the artist refers to as ”rotatorhead,” a unit of modified deejay turntables and vinyl discs. Lightbulbs and office lamps blink and illuminate the installation in sync with the looped beats. This project, along with his recent documentary-style video work Plywood City Stories, form the foundation of UJINO’s newest work HOME MOVIE, which began under the stay-home, pandemic lockdown in Japan and was completed for this exhibition.
Whose Stories? is on view at the Kamloops Art Gallery until December 31, 2021.
UJINO, HOME MOVIE, 2021, video still.