A Guardian in Underpants: Chinatsu Ban’s friendly elephants stampede New York
Dorit Cohen
Chinatsu Ban, The 10:45 PM Creature (It Was Probably a Raccoon!), 2005. acrylic on canvas, 51 3/8 x 76 3/8 in
When Chinatsu Ban paints schoolgirls in their underpants they look like little Japanese dolls that lost their Kimonos. Ban is not preoccupied with the Japanese Lolita cult like Aya Takano, who paints overtly sexual girls in underpants. Mostly, Ban puts underpants on elephants instead. But she is still occupied with cuteness and youth, and what these twin obsessions reveal about Japan.
In Naizo’s Mask, a four-legged creature, probably an elephant, is wearing a cute doll mask with big eyes and no mouth. The mask brings to mind Japanese ceremonial dance masks, but while those masks had very powerful, animated expressions, Ban’s mask has no expression at all. It’s a typical image of "kaawaii," a Japanese word that means both "cute" and "pathetic."
Last March Ban, who was born in 1973 and graduated from the department of oil painting at Tama Art University in Japan in 1995, had her first solo show in New York, at the Marianne Boesky Gallery. Two of her paintings are currently on view at the Japan Society and her sculpture of a mother elephant and a baby elephant called V W X Yellow Elephant Underwear/H I J Kiddy Elephant now stands just outside Central Park. Presented by the Public Art Fund, the installation is a part of "Little Boy: The arts of Japan’s exploding Subculture," on view at the Japan Society until July 24, 2005.
"Little Boy" was a codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The exhibition’s curator, the artist Takashi Murakami, presents his interpretation of Japan’s popular culture and traces its roots through many regions of the country’s psyche: the trauma of the defeat in the Pacific war (1932-1945), the devastation of the atomic bomb, Japan’s military and political dependence on the United States, and the replacement of a traditional, hierarchical Japanese culture with a disposable consumer culture ostensibly produced for children and adolescents. The title also refers to the "infantalization" of Japanese culture, evident in the fixation on cartoon imagery, cute products and youth markets- a result, Murakami argues, of Japan’s economic and political dependence on the west. These unresolved conflicts, "Little Boy" suggests, are the explosive context of Japan’s pop culture.
Ban’s sculptures of a parent elephant and a "child" are a reminder of Murakami’s idea that the relationship between America and Japan is similar to a father and child relationship, while the adorable pile of poop, decorated with hearts, might stand for good luck wishes.
Ban’s paintings at the Japan Society are populated with playful and whimsical elephants possessing supernatural powers. The colors are as pleasant and comforting as ice cream. She portrays a child-like world, joyful yet haunted by irrational fears. In Elephant underpants vs. Apple half, the apple seeds turn in to eyes, and the apples look like threatening invaders from another planet. In The 10:45 pm creature (It was probably a raccoon), a small elephant wearing white underpants defends itself against an enormous monster.
In Ban’s private iconography, elephants serve as guardians: "I bought a small figurine of an elephant downtown," she has said. "This purchase made me feel cleansed, just like when my mother gave me a crystal ball or when I had my own name seal made upon becoming twenty and entering adulthood. These things are like talismans. It’s scary to imagine that someday I won’t exist in this world anymore. I am troubled by the urge to run away from this fear. Elephants make me feel safe. They have saved me many times." By turning the elephant into a savior, Ban has created a personal helper much like "Dorademon," a popular character of Japanese comic books and film animation.
The elephants that Ban put at the entrance to Central Park bring to mind the traditional Japanese sculptures of guardians that stood at the gateway of temples and protected graves, but while the old guardians were armed and had a ferocious expression, Ban’s elephants are harmless. They look like big toys. They have no armor. Ban says that their underpants are a symbol of protection– and they do make the plump, perfectly rounded elephants look like Sumo wrestlers, but sumo wrestlers wearing fancy underwear as stylish as a new Louis Vuitton bag designed by Takashi Murakami. The large underpants are lovingly decorated with a playful pattern of smaller underpants in many colors and shapes. They are a reminder of comfort, of abundance and choices, but they also stand for simplicity and basic needs.
