A BABY giggles as its headphones supply a critique on Japanese society to accompany a video of school girls whirling with phallic “moya-moya” sticks fashioned from imaginary heart tissue. The video installation is part of an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo that includes Makoto Aida, who has specialised for years in being offensive. Bizarrely, the show is intended for youngsters on their summer holidays, and is all the more provocative for that.
Mr Aida is often labelled sadist, racist and misogynist. An exhibition at the private Mori Art Museum in 2012-13 included a video of himself masturbating in front of the kanji characters for “beautiful young girl”. Another notorious work showed countless naked and bloodied schoolgirls being mashed up in a fruit blender.
The artist usually demurs when asked what his works mean, but here he says his aim is to show a highly unusual family speaking in a blunt way, to encourage others. His wife, also an artist, and his son built some of the exhibits. Japanese mothers are mocked in a study of a Chanel-...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1NCBQWO
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