Tokyo, Japan – waitingroom is pleased to present a solo exhibition, “We walk and talk to search your true home / Moomin Family goes on a picnic to see Kannon,” by Yuki IIYAMA from 9/13 (Sat.) to 10/19 (Sun.), 2014. IIYAMA is a young and emerging artist who graduated from the painting course of Tokyo University of the Arts in 2013, and is exhibiting with us for the first time. At this exhibition, we will present several video works, including which she recreated the scenes and sounds of the hallucinations that a member of her family sees, and the other about the medical records of the mental hospital. Other works include drawings and documents in an installation format.

Yuki IIYAMA was born in Kanagawa in 1988. She graduated from the department of painting at Joshibi University of Arts and Design in 2011 and recently finished her MFA program at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2013. She creates videos, installations, and knit works based on her collection of scrapbooks that she purchases on the online auction site. The characteristic of her work is evident in the way she uses the story from her scrapbook to explore about the artist herself, the people in the past, evidence of events, and all the images and episodes she receives from them. Her recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition, “Steam, Smoke, Grace,” (JIKKA, 2013), a group exhibition, “28zaki Kaihin Exposition Festival,” (Kyu-tamanoi ryokan, Fukuoka, 2013), “identity X,” (nca l nichido contemporary art, Tokyo, 2014) and “First Attacks!” (Space Wunderkammer, Tokyo, 2014).

In the recent years, IIYAMA has worked with the historical theme of Hansen’s diseaseleprosy and the Great East Japan Earthquake through the anonymous scrapbooks; however, this time she has focused on her sister’s hallucinations for her motif. Her personal experiences and historical and medical facts of this mental illness that she gained from research, merges and visualizes IIYAMA’s world. And from these works, the viewers may realize that there is no dramatic difference between the worlds of us “normals” and the world of people who suffer from problems like these. As the details of the exhibit, there will be a video work, “We walk and talk to search your home” and another one, “Moomin Family goes on a picnic to see Kannon,” which is an event that her younger sister hallucinates. In the latter work, six members of her family recreate the hallucination that her sister sees. There will be texts and dialogues that have a connection with this slide work also. Other pieces include a video work of the medical records the cases of patients at a mental hospital, a documentary of notes and letters that the artist put together centering around the four core pieces of work created from the multiple perceptions of a Japanese silent film made in 1926.

“When one of our family members has hallucinations, the rest of us are irritated and confused, and wait for her to clam down. We wonder what had gone wrong, what part of the last conversation was so upsetting to her. But sometimes, there seems to have been nothing that triggered her hallucinations. We can never understand. She can’t draw out the things that she sees like that famous artist. There are terms like ‘Outsider Art’ special exhibitions are held for those works, but in reality, it may be that it is rarely possible for these people with mental illnesses — this is an expression I hate to use — to express the things that they see. Maybe it’s more common for the people to depend on medical drugs to live, not knowing how to show to express themselves. I think my senses are numbed because I went to an university where everyone around me were capable of creating some form of art. However, after living with my sister again after several years of separation, I realized that not everyone has that talent. And I also realized that we can all fill in for each others’ weaknesses.”
(From the text Yuki IIYAMA, “We walk and talk to search your home.”)

Please come and see the installation space created by the layers of perspectives of the artist herself on this particular theme through her photographs, video works, actual records, relating texts and objects.

Solo Exhibition “Steam, Smoke, Grace,” 2013, mixed media installation, installation view, JIKKA, Tokyo

The booklet “Notes for the Exhibition” produced in conjunction with the exhibition, contains materials about the works and transcriptions of the texts so that visitors can take home a piece of the exhibition. The booklet also contains the nurses’ replies to the artist’s letters to them, which are not displayed in the gallery.

Yuki IIYAMA “Notes for the Exhibition”
Publication date: 2014/09/19
Publication: waitingroom
Number of pages: 32 pages
Price: 800 yen (tax included)