Haruko Tanaka’s new show at Sea and Space Explorations, What We Give is Ours Forever, reads right-to-left, left-to-right, up-to-down, and down-to-up. In a combination of photos, text, and objects, she has created an international instruction manual to cross-culutral understanding. In her series of photos Some of My Inheritance, Tanaka provides baffling instructions for folding fitted sheets, plastic grocery bags, and fabrics. Superimposed onto these photos are a series of photographic diagrams demonstrating how to execute the folds. The diagrams are laid out on a grid; however, the sequence of the photos is not meant to be read left-to-right then top-to-bottom as in western languages, but top-to-bottom then right to left as in traditional Japanese, and in one instance, in no particular order at all. The experience is reminiscent of reading an instructional manual in all available languages only to realize that by virtue having read the instructions in all languages, you cannot operate the item at all: the semantic slippage between languages leaves you in the space between translations where the meaning of the instructions begins to erase itself.
Tanaka draws from the style of instructions found in Japanese cookbooks and origami manuals, and as she says of Japanese cookbooks, “These people, who came up with the instructions, I’m sure at one point, had to let go and say, okay, we can’t spoonfeed everybody, we need to edit. I think that’s what I was attracted to.” (Interview taken from exhibition materials) Indeed, this is exactly the experience of the show, one that places the viewer in the role of a hopeful novice who is struggling to follow Tanaka’s conceptual acrobatics. Though this process was engaging, appropriating an instructional manual can result in a piece that is a bit didactic: there seems to be an assumption that there is an urgent need for art that will sensitize the ignorati to cultural difference.
Other highlights of the show include sheets of paper that describe Japanese tongue twisters. Here, the English text is printed on the bottom, the Japanese in the middle, and illustrations corresponding to the words on top. Printed as photocopies and mounted on the wall, these pages function as a polyglot incorporating English, Japanese, and visual imagery. Like the photos, this series reminds viewers that they read, not only text, but also visual material, in a cultural specific way.
Tanaka’s work is well executed and makes for a thought provoking experience in cross cultural awareness, and the strength of her work almost makes up for its condescending tone.
Address: Sea and Space Explorations
4755 York Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90042
April 5th - April 26th
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