Noriyuki Tanaka

How do people form a conscious awareness of other people? What prompts them to decide whether they like or dislike a person? This work takes as its motif what is perhaps the most important determinant of these perceptions, feelings and emotions: the face (or portrait). At the same time the work addresses themes such as the connection between personality and appearance, the problem of memory and identity arising from self-transformation and the desire for bodily manipulation, the collective psychology that leads to the creation of celebrity, the self and the other—or the differentiation and assimilation of history and culture, the issue of ethnicity and community, perceptions of humans resulting from religion or views encompassing their relationships with nature, the relationship between the mythical (as in fantasy stories) and the real, the tension between the recognition of manners and social systems and the expression of the individual, the categories of age and gender and the imagination and so on… Keeping these concerns in mind, I established and gave expression to 100 different characterizations of Erika, as though filling in each of the grid squares in a multi-dimensional matrix.

For example, we have reached a point where a person is able to have two separate identities—one in the real world and the other in virtual space. Maybe by changing your external façade, your way of speaking and gestures, your brain and mind might just adjust to those things, leading to the “overwriting” of your very identity. In “100 ERIKAS” I have created 100 such potential identities.

The model used was the actress Erika Sawajiri, who at the time was an eponymous presence in Japanese media and had a very well recognized identity.

Credits:
Constructer Photo Collaborator: Erika Sawajiri
Production support: TAKAKI_KUMADA, Indigolight, Tetsuro Nagase, Yasuhiro Watanabe, Shinichi Miter, Toshio Takeda, ShinYa, ABE, Shinji Konishi, COCO, MICHIRU, ASAKO, Yuichi Matsui, Jin Ebashi, Satoshi Wada, Shu Nagasawa, Oi-chan, MONDO, Rachel D’ Amour, ENVY, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Japan, Inc., Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc.

Artist Talks

Sat 5.9. – Sun 6.9. 18:00 – 19:00
Meetin point Foyer (Level 0)
100 Erikas – Noriyuki Tanaka (JP) (Foyer)
Device Art – curated by Machiko Kusahara (JP)* (Level +1)