(English follows after Japanese)
連休の一日、東京都写真美術館で「森村泰昌展・ なにものかへのレクイエムー戦場の頂上の芸術」を見ました。
今回は20世紀の男たちをテーマとした新作の展覧会です。もうかれこれ10年以上前から、彼が名画の人物や名女優、アーティストに扮した姿を見てきているので、次は何に変身するのかしら、と軽い気持ちで会場に入りました。
しかし、見終わって改めて、彼が歴史上の誰かに変身し、皆が知っている（と思っている）表象の中に自ら入り込んでそれを再演しすることで、その事象を読み解いている、というプロセスを強く感じました。見ている私たちは、さらにその読み解きを読み解く、入れ子のような状態で彼の創作世界に身を置くことになります。特に今回、映像作品が数点あり、ますます彼の世界観に囲まれるというか身を沈める体験を強く実感しました。これまで写真の作品ではあまり「言葉」は出てこなかった記憶がありますが、映像作品の中では彼が「なにものか」になって語る言葉がもとても詩的でかつユーモアと哀しみのようなものも入り交じり、忘れ難い印象を残します。
彼が私たちに差し出しているのは、見慣れているようで、実のところそれがなんだったのかと聞かれると言い淀んでしまう歴史の中の「なにものか」への「レクイエム」なのかな、と思いながら会場を出ました。
"A Requiem: Art on Top of the Battlefield"
On the sunny day of early May, I have been to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography to see the exhibition of Yasumasa Morimura "A Requiem: Art on Top of the Battlefield". He is an artist famous for transforming himself to someone or something famous. In this exhibition, the theme was about the men in 20th century. For more than ten years, I have been watching him being someone in the famous historical paintings, actresses, or artists, so I was wondering who he would be next without thinking anything special. However, after looking through the exhibition, I strongly recognised the process that he had tried to mimic someone in the history who everybody thinks they knows, and he played it again to reread the symbols. We, who are looking at his works re-reread when we encounter his creative world. It is like nesting boxes. In this exhibition, compared to his previous ones, there were some film works so that I felt I was sinking into his world more deeply. In his works of photography, I recall he has not been using expression by words or language very much, in the films, the words he speaks mimicking someone sounds quite poetic, and at the same time, humorous or even I felt the mixture of sorrow so it engrave something in my mind really deeply. What he offered us might be some historical events or people in the history that we think we know very well, but when we stop to think, and ask ourself again, we actually can't answer yes we know this person very well. I was thinking he might have made the requiems to those vague "something" or "someone" in the history in this exhibition.
