World Beat
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Two giant warehouses on Yokohama's sterile Yamashita Pier hardly seem a promising venue for an art exhibition. And on the morning I visited, the International Triennial of Contemporary Arts wasn't exactly inundated with crowds.
With the wind coming off the sea, all that was missing was a three-legged stray dog and a couple of prairie tumbleweeds blowing around my feet.
That's a shame, because there may not be a bigger, brassier or more provocative exhibition of modern art in East Asia today. Japan's riposte to the likes of the Venice Biennale, the triennial is a mixed-media event that brings together the work of more than 80 artists from 30 countries and indulges them in a way that few other countries can match.
The result is a series of 'fresh new encounters between art, people and the city', say the organisers. Well, they would say that. Some of the 'encounters' are just baffling - such as the one that features a huge tinsel Christmas tree over a mirror, flanked by what look like man-sized pin cushions. It's apparently a metaphor for 'the progression from physical desires to spiritual stability' by an artist with 'a unique way of seeing the world due to hallucinations and obsessions that began in childhood'.
The event is so eclectic - with exhibits ranging from the playful to the political - that visitors can just move on until they find something that speaks to them. For most people, this probably won't be Dutch artist Atelier Van Lieshout's fibreglass digestive-tract bars. Painted in a tasteful brown and shaped to mimic the passage of food through the digestive system, it's titled Rectum.
I was impressed by Shanghai artist Chen Zhen's Purification Room, which shows a chaotic modern apartment covered in dried clay. Many visitors linger thoughtfully over a provocative exhibit by Kenyan Ingrid Mwangi, showing a video crucifixion, but with traditional elements reversed: the white male figure nailed to a cross has become an African female who apparently self mutilates.
If all that sounds too ponderous for a Saturday afternoon outing, the triennial also has great interactive art displays for children, dubbed Art Circus. Several of the exhibits, including Taisuke's Drip of Forest and Alma Quinto's Abe's Ayayam feature stuffed toys, but still make serious points.
Some of the performance art is also aimed at children, including the Shintai Hyougen (roughly translated as 'body expression') Circle, a troupe of almost naked, poker-faced dancers who mix hilarious clowning with startling athleticism.
Where are those crowds? Perhaps the triennial is a victim of bad timing, as Japan winds down from the success of the recent World Expo in Aichi Prefecture. The organisers say people will come - and there's every reason to believe them. The Japanese seldom abandon a decent art event, and this one is better than most.
