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| Oct. 9, 2003. 01:00 AM |
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Doll-o-rama
Japanese creations bring with them a profound cultural
message Design
Exchange show is for adults
only
PETER
GODDARD
You
can't really play with the Japanese ningyo (dolls) at the
Design Exchange, but that doesn't stop them from playing with
you.
The posse of Yellow Boy dolls by Hirohisa
Kadomatsu seems to be waiting for your answer, their beady
eyes bugging out of their soft vinyl yolk-yellow bodies, their
arms rigid and close to their sides.
But what was the question?
Nobuyuki Takahasi's plastic see-through no name noodle
man — his innards made from contents of one of those cheap
Japanese noodle cups into which one pours boiling water — is
deliberately revealing himself, opening his see-through hands
to show how empty they are. It's a confession from a medical
school teaching device.
And the sweet-natured fluffy Softies, the sexy
cuddle dolls from the Wonder Farms design collective simply
beg to be touched, whether that means pulling the yellow
Softie's eyeball out from its blood-red socket or squeezing
the three playful little udders on the pale blue Softie.
We should have seen ningyo coming, what with Japanese
design from cars to comics saturating our culture in every
way.
In fact, the number of Toronto artists represented in
"Tokyo Doll" suggests that it's not just design that's been
exported.
Aspects of the Japanese imagination — these semi-human
critters come from somewhere deep within Japan's psyche — have
taken root in the west.
Yet that doesn't mean we understand what exactly
triggers this imagination or how it turns us on, either.
The results aren't always pretty, a disturbing theme
that runs through many current Japanese films and novels.
Dogs And Demons: Tales From The Dark Side Of Japan,
Alex Kerr's recent history of modern Japan, suggests a country
vibrating restlessly between bouts of longing for tradition
and wild flights of highly energized techno fancy, with no
real resting place in between.
This restless is everywhere at "Tokyo Doll," with some
30 dolls from 22 artists.
The small — even tiny — sculptures, sometimes made from
improbable material like Toronto artist Seth Scriver's ningyo
of recycled socks, are action figures when all the action is
in the head.
But there's action-figure power here. These toy-like
devices demand you try to understand their blank faces on
their scale, not your own.
Most dolls from most cultures have been unsettling in
one way or another.
Kids once wondered at the haughty blankness in the
pampered adult face of the classic 19th-century French
porcelain Madame Rohmer fashion doll or the neediness in the
gamine eyes of a German Bisque Doll some grandmother might
have been given by her mother.
And, of course, Barbie has had everyone on a keen
sexual edge since she first popped out of Mattel's heated
imagination in 1959.
Dolls are like little aliens in our lives —
particularly the cute and cuddly ones — who've come from a
planet parallel to ours. They seem to be like us, but aren't.
Yet they seem to know us better than we know them. Sometimes
they know us better than we know ourselves. How else can we
explain the remarkable way they can communicate back to us, in
absolute silence yet, the most amazingly, intimate things,
understanding when we hurt or are scared?
But these ningyo at the Design Exchange — designed by
and for adults, not kids — are unsettling in their own
peculiar way. They radically shift what expectations we may
have of them, whether than means something seemingly simple,
like what playing with them might actually entail — none
of these figures look like they're out for a good time —
or when it comes to something semi-serious, like sex.
Flashing forward Barbie's fierce 1950s sexuality, where
a tight sweater played the part of angry fins on a Buick,
there's Kyoko Ookubo's nearly naked little doll with some kind
of furry bird figure on her head. A pet bunny is hugging her
neck with its tiny paws as its hind feet are pushing down her
underwear, revealing a hint of pubic hair. Here's a toy figure
of real urban savagery — Ookubo grew up living on the streets.
(Tradition in Japanese doll making is not entirely
ignored. Ookubo's ningyo is kin to Japan's famous Kokeshi
dolls, brightly painted wooden stick figures without arms
which, long-held rumour has it, represented the play toys of
dead girls killed by their parents who were unable to support
everyone in their large families. Roughly translated, Kokeshi
means "extinguished child.")
What's disconcerting is the way this sense of gravity
is wrapped in cute shapes and pale colours. "But that's the
way it is in Japan, from what I've seen," says the show's
curator, Rafi Ghanaghounian, who's spent well over a year
arranging the show, almost single-handedly raising the $80,000
he needed to produce it.
"The whole culture of Japan is cute. Even the grossest
thing — a garbage truck picking up garbage plays sounds that
make it seem like an ice cream truck — is disguised in
cuteness. Everyone's dressed up in cute. It's part of the
culture."
But to Toronto illustrator/designer Derrick Hodgson —
partner with Tania Sanhueza in the Hoboyard series at
"Tokyo Doll" — ningyo reflect Japan's overwhelming visual
culture.
"Japanese culture is based on the icon," he says,
"whether it's an icon for a police station, a bus stop or a
place on the street where you can buy noodles. This is culture
is cute, safe and fast-moving. It relies heavily on visual
communication."
Tania Sanhuenza thinks that ningyo come from images,
figures and symbols found in the rich tradition of
storytelling, which has a moral bent. "In these stories, the
symbols are there to remind you of certain emotions," she
says.
What makes the ningyo at "Tokyo Doll" so unsettling is
the sense that they've escaped parental guidance, or any
guidance, for that matter. This is modern design on the loose
and on a mission. Someday we'll find out what that is.
pgoddard@thestar.ca
Additional
articles by Peter
Goddard
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