“I often portray people who do not always live up to their ideals, who are vulgar and honest about their desires in my work. I believe that all human beings have such aspects, and humour is a way of affirming this.” — Fuyuhiko Takata
Fuyuhiko Takata | Image courtesy of the artist
Fuyuhiko Takata (born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1987) is a visual storyteller whose is directing, filming, narrating, and even acting in the videos to elaborate visions playfully and interrogatesocial questions around power, nation, gender, and sexuality. He has produced pop and humorous video works that deal with a variety of themes and images, including religion, mythology, fairy tales, sexuality, gender, narcissism, and trauma. Most of Takata’s works were filmed in his apartment, and characterized by handmade staging, occasional erotic expressions, and outrageous stories to raise various questions about human society.
Fuyuhiko Takata, The Princess and the Magic Birds (Video Still), 2021 | Image courtesy of the artist and Waiting Room
Takata attained bachelor’s degree in photography from Tokyo Zokei University in 2011, and master’s degree in oil painting from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2013 respectively. In 2017, he completed his Ph.D. in oil painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Takata currently lives and works in Chiba, Japan.
Fuyuhiko Takata, Many Classic Moments (Video Still), 2011 | Image courtesy of the artist and WaitingRoom
His work has been shown in Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2023); Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2023); The Japan Foundation Sydney (2022); VBKÖ, Vienna (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2016) and many others.
Takata’s fantastical inner world
Takada has always been interested in the meaning between fantasy and the existence of people living nowadays. “Fantasy and eroticism are common themes in classical art, but I feel like they haven’t been given much importance in contemporary art recently.”
Fuyuhiko Takata, Love Exercise (Video Still), 2013 | Image courtesy of the artist and Waiting Room
Takata sympathizes with “people who have fantasies about the ideal body they want to have but are half-hearted and can’t achieve it”. He creates his work by using CG or something that ends up being exactly what he wants while using his body to keep failing to represent the human touch in their inconsistency and in the way they keep failing. And he likes to use his handmade staging to move the audience. “It’s imperfect, but it still makes your heart flutter.”
Fuyuhiko Takata, Afternoon of a Faun (Video Still), 2016 | Image courtesy of the artist and Waiting Room
In his earlier body of work, the presence of Takada’s physical body exists in some of his videos, including “Many Classic Moments” (2011) and “Afternoon of a Faun” (2016). Recently, he has been consciously creating works that someone else can play the role. “I feel strongly that the body can be substituted, that someone else can play the role, and that I want people to see it as a device of desire that is made to work that way.”
The male body as a motif, disrupting the image in a playful, ludic manner
Inspirated by Yoko Ono’s work “Cut Piece” and “Butterfly Dream”, the old Chinese tale by Zhuangzi, Takata’s recent work Cut Suits (2023) depicts a butterfly transformed into a pair of scissors, hacking away at the clothes of a young man who has fallen asleep.
Fuyuhiko Takata, The butterfly dream (Video Still), 2022 | Image courtesy of the artist and Waiting Room
“About a man who takes a nap and transforms into a butterfly in his dream. I felt a certain erotic attraction to this story’s aesthetic atmosphere since I was a child, which led me to this work. The combination was totally intuitive. It’s my work to make sure I don’t miss the poetic ideas that come along from time to time.”
Fuyuhiko Takata, Cut Suits (Video Still), 2023 | Image courtesy of the artist, Waiting Room and Sunpride Foundation
In Cut Suits (2023), a performance given by multiple male models wearing in suits as “salaryman”, the icon of corporate masculinity in Japan. Teasingly cutting away at the threads that shackle these souls to destinies of heteronormativity and capitalist machismo, Takata humanizes them and rescues their innocent joy enshrouded just beneath the surface.While this seems to be an allusion to an eroticized glimpse of men in suits, it is also a kind of liberation from the social norms surrounding Japanese conceptions of masculinity.