The old woman and young girl, assimilating, intertwining, entangling, and becoming ensnared

In June 2009, Miwa Yanagi was selected as an exhibiting artist for the Japan Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The "Windswept Women" presented at that time featured her theatricality, previously inherent in her photographic works, materialized as an installation with a more physical form.

What most caught the eye was likely the unusual appearance of the Japan Pavilion, which served as the venue. For the exhibition, she reportedly enveloped the pristine white pavilion in a pitch-black tent. This alone was quite impactful, but displayed within were images of a single woman, in a bizarre body unimaginable in reality, raging in a storm within a giant frame.
This was the strange form of "old woman and young girl," the two opposing "women" that intersect, which is the theme of Yanagi's work.

In many of Miwa Yanagi's video works, such as "Kagome Kagome" (1998), "Granddaughters" (2002), "Suna-shojo" (2004), "Suna-onna" (2005), "Fortune Telling" (2005), and "The Old Girls' Troupe" (2009), despite having beginnings and endings, reality and imagination become so intertwined as if repetition were natural.

Just as there is no end to the real world, the women within her created works never meet their conclusions; they possess the strength to endlessly repeat small acts of destruction and creation within their daily lives.



The new work "Lullaby," presented at Rat Hole Gallery this time, is a video piece featuring two women of different ages—an old woman and a young girl—a theme Yanagi has long explored. In a confined space of disproportionate size, the two confront each other yet assimilate, intertwine, entangle, and become ensnared. Eventually, as the two move, the confined space transforms and collapses.

The two, from different generations, do not represent their respective eras but are ambivalent beings. This work, connected to "Windswept Women," reveals a theatrical physical confrontation between the two, and the meaninglessness of domestic or familial relationships, through the imagery.

You may find yourself questioning all the concepts you've taken for granted. Her beautifully strange worlds will likely teach us that truth can be altered in any way, and how easily the balanced real world can be shaken.