Still image from Atonement by Chika Mukai
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mohandas Gandhi
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mohandas Gandhi
Surprised is the word one would use to describe Mukai’s praxis sensibility with video, for she is young and a graduate student of Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts University, finishing her master’s degree (the only one this year). It appears Mukai was born with camera in her hand, for her previous video Sensation was a savvy fine art film, thematically based on vision (memory) from her gruesome visual encounters with western archetypal tortured sculptures of Christ on the Cross across Denmark whilst visiting relatives there.
For Mukai, the foreign visual sensation of the Western Christ hanging gruesomely, nailed to the cross and being told he died for us because of our sins was somewhat bewildering for her, even unfair, as her free choice seems to have be taken away, for it appears she would never have wanted anyone to die this way, for her actions in life.
Christ didn’t do anything when upon this earth but give the world options, he was negotiating, he was about choices and Mukai in her own way is doing the same, giving options to the audience, making them aware of her opinions, letting the world know that she wants a choice about whether God should die for her actions, in a way this video installation is her reconciliation with God..
Mukai’s current video installation titled; “the Atonement” at Gallery Ami - Kanoko is in the upstairs at exhibition area. Upon entering the installation, the light is subdued, almost chapel like and the video running on a loop, startis with a healthy bunch of flower adorning the cross, it resonates many memories from the histories of painting, like chiaroscuro and some of the floral still life images one has witnessed from the Golden Age of Dutch painting occasionally exhibited at the local Museums of Art in the Kansia region.
As the video progresses the flowers wilt and die, there are no miracles here and for Mukai that’s the natural cycle of life. Mukai’s video presents beautiful sensations of death even as the flowers wilt and die on the cross, it’s very strange imagery.
But for many people upon this earth, Christ’s journey came to its on unnatural end at the hands of tyrants, but that is not unlike how many people die in this world, everyday, there is nothing unusual about it, it is what it is a gruesomely normal cycle of death.
This is a very interesting an thought provoking artwork and Mukai video installation is on exhibition now at Gallery Kanoko, Osaka, Japan, Date: 8 - 13 February, 2010, 12:00 - 19:30 (last day -16:00), so if you have the time do try and make the effort to see it.
Link to her website here:
Links to Mukai and Gallery Kanoko.
http://www.mu-kai.com/chika/
http://www.ami-kanoko.com/
