| My work frequently incorporates common, everyday things. Many of these things are what we call fanshii in Japanese, a word that originates from Japan’s great admiration for Western culture. Fanshii things are said to be odd (in that they are neither Western nor Japanese), kitschy, girlish, and tacky. Living in Japan, I am very familiar with such fanshii things, but I have never liked them. In my opinion there is even something “uncanny” about them, in a Freudian sense. It is difficult for me to describe their “uncanniness” but it has certainly been a motivating factor in the work I create. When I learned of Freud’s explanation of “the uncanny,” I was released from the restraint that the fanshii held over me. |
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Yuichi Higashionna
Yuichi Higashionna, Untitled (Chandelier VII), 2005. Fluorescent light, aluminum, and wire, 39 x 49 1/4 x 43 3/8 inches. Edition of 2 with 2 APs. Courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.My work frequently incorporates common, everyday things. Many of these things are what we call fanshii in Japanese, a word that originates from Japan’s great admiration for Western culture. Fanshii things are said to be odd (in that they are neither Western nor Japanese), kitschy, girlish, and tacky.
Living in Japan, I am very familiar with such fanshii things, but I have never liked them. In my opinion there is even something “uncanny” about them, in a Freudian sense. It is difficult for me to describe their “uncanniness” but it has certainly been a motivating factor in the work I create.
When I learned of Freud’s explanation of “the uncanny,” I was released from the restraint that the fanshii held over me. What interests me now is to bring this “uncanniness” into my work in a more positive way, incorporating it in the context of humor or eroticism, rather than representing it straightforwardly.
There is probably no country as fond of excessively bright white fluorescent light as Japan. Circular, fluorescent, bright white lamps, which came to be widely used in Japanese homes after the war, symbolize something particularly Japanese.
I am afraid that I am under the illusion that it is a Japanese mentality to try to make everything fanshii, that is to say, small, round, and cute. The Chandelier series, in which many circular fluorescent lamps are used, began in 2001. This series is my tribute, both a homage and a satire, to the Japanese “fluorescent culture” that fascinates me and at the same time makes me uncomfortable. Yes—my aim was to make a fluorescent-lamp monster!
