Introduction
This solo exhibition attempts to bring out a true picture of Okinawa-based photographer Ishikawa Mao (b. 1953), who remains very active today. It includes major works from her early period and focuses particularly on new works in The Great Ryukyu Photo Scroll series that she has been working on since 2014.
Ishikawa’s photography was exhibited at an art museum outside Okinawa for the first time at the group exhibition Non-sect Radical Contemporary Photography Ⅲ at Yokohama Museum of Art in 2004, and she has since had held many exhibitions throughout the world. This show at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is her first solo exhibition at an art museum in Tokyo, and follows the success of her career retrospective Ishikawa Mao: Bad Ass and Beauty One Love at Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum in 2021.
While Ishikawa’s work is in public collections throughout the world and is widely known, there have been few opportunities to examine her photographs in the historical context of her earlier work. This show is to introduce her oeuvre in sequence from early works up to her latest pieces.
This show is a good opportunity to view the latest work by Ishikawa, who continues to train her lens on the frontline of the difficult geopolitical situation in which modern-day Okinawa still finds itself, despite the fact that last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Okinawa’s return to Japan.
[OYAFUSO Daisuke (age 41), Ai (age 39), Tiiida (age 11), Yunta (age 10), Ninufa (age 6), Kanayooo (age 3)] Is it kind to hide how mixed-roots children have been treated in Japan and Okinawa, that they were denied Japanese citizenship until 1985, that they were not allowed to attend public schools or even enter institutions for war orphans? Even though the number of mixed-roots children is increasing, why does society continue to treat them as if they were foreigners who just arrived in Japan yesterday? I want to interrogate the attitude of promoting “education for the Japanese.” Are we still forcefully imposing “Japanese-ness” on our children? When we instill “Japanese-ness” by teaching Ojigi (bowing) culture, are we leaving mixed-roots children behind? Failure to understand the problems that society inflicts on minorities means that we may not even realize that we ourselves are unconsciously inflicting these problems on society. It is the indifferent who are shaping society at the expense of victims of the U.S., the U.S. military base in Okinawa, racism, microaggressions, etc. Once these people shed their indifference, society and the world will change. (April 24, 2021, Motobucho Public Market)
