I .C . A.N. S.E.E.Y.O.U
AY A M O M O S E

Sat. 7 December 2019 – Sat. 18 January 2020
2 – 7 pm (closed on Monday, Tuesday)
Closed on 28 December 2019 – 7 January 2020

3

2

1

1

I.C.A.N.S.E.E.Y.O.U

2Jokanaan

3Social Dance2019

2019

2019

Single channel video

2 channel video installation

Single channel video

6 min 40 sec

12 min 26 sec

10 min 33 sec

E FAG E a s t Fa c to r y A r t G a l l e r y
1-11-6 Higashikasai, Edogawa-ku, Tokyo https://www.instagram.com/efag.css/

Aya Momose has questioned anew the act of watching movingimages, via moving images themselves. Her work exposes themoment in which subjectivity can waver, exposing the uncertainty of relationships with others. For the exhibition I.C.A.N.
S.E.E.Y.O.U, she focuses on the aspect of video as an emotionalapparatus. It presents video works that employ visual languages
and gestures, such as a movement of the eyes, or sign language,
to explore the relations that are constructed through gaze andthe desires within oneself.
The artist blinks towards the camera in an eponymousvideo I.C.A.N.S.E.E.Y.O.U. She opens and closes her eyes weakly
in an unnatural rhythm, occasionally closing her eyelids forwhat seems to be a long time. As her blinking and facial expressions reiterate, variable patterns emerge. As the video continues
her at first undemonstrative face becomes increasingly full ofwoe, with eyes wide open, catching back a sob, and giving agrimace. This seemingly vulnerable person is in a plain whiteroom. Her blinks no longer seem to be a physiological phenomenon, but rather something willed; she closes her eyes again
and again, using all the muscles of her face: eyes, cheeks, andmouth. In this work, the artist translates the message “I can seeyou” into Morse code, and transmits it through her blinks
towards the camera. The bizarre idea refers to a video that theartist watched on the Internet: footage from a war which showsa captive who secretly conveyed a message by blinking in Morse
code while he was interrogated. While the artist partiallyre-enacts this action, the cause of her behaviour is ambiguous.
There is no clue for the audience to know what is happening tothis person standing on the screen. Is she emotional, or is she
suffering from a physical symptom of continuous blinks? Thework is a self-portrait, nevertheless. The artist, who is a cameraperson, exposes her body in front of the camera, surveyed inthat moment by multiple anonymous gazes. The audience does
not doubt the fact that they see a woman intermittently closing
her eyes. However, without translation, most of them cannot
understand the actual intention of her blinking acts, as hermessage is conveyed in a language that is not commonly used
as a communication tool. When her affirmative confession, withits suggestive title, is unveiled via a mediator, a weird situation
occurs. In a kind of mise en abyme, the bodies of the audience,
which are observing the subject of the video, are seen by thevery same subject who is shot, who, moreover, is the one who isfilming herself in the first place.
In her past works, Momose has dealt with the issue that thecoherency of the body is a collective assumption which is uncritically taken for truth, as well as questions of subjective agency.
Another of her works in the exhibition, Jokanaan, develops thistheme further, focusing on the intersection between gaze anddesire, via motion capture techniques. The work stages the dramatic climax of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome. In the opera, it
is a moment in which the titular character’s perverse and overwhelming sexual desire is enacted through a madly ecstaticsong, with Salome singing her demands for kissing the head of
the prophet Jokanaan, who refused her advances. The two channel video installation shows one screen on which a live-action
image of a man wearing a motion-capture suit, dances tomusic in the role of Salome. On the other screen a female figure
also representing Salome, generated via computer graphics, isbrought to life via the processing of data of the first dancer’smovements. The artist uses computer graphics, a popular medium of visual representation, to create a virtual situation inwhich the gazes of two figures intersect, despite their unsuccessful love in the original story. While the male dancer dances andsings passionately in reality, Salome appears in a virtual spaceas his representational image, whose hands are red with blood.
The two bodies dance in sync, as a dramatic melody echoes. On
the one hand the male dancer gradually starts to express his
discomfort and writhe in agony, as if he were obsessed withSalome, who becomes on the other hand frantic, being absorbedwith sensual pleasure. She stands up and sings “but wherefore
didst thou not look at me” her movements increasingly diverging from the male dancer’s. She begins to move autonomously,
as if she were gaining subjectivity all on her own. In such amoment, we see the uncanny situation that one is looked backat by the subject that one desires: the body of the dancer reflects
Jokanaan’s desired body, and at the same time is captured
by Salome’s original desiring gaze. An obsession with being
seen — “I want you to see me” — that is present in the crazed
self-obsession of Salome’s desire is now juxtaposed with thenarcissistic aesthetics that are associated with the reflexive
medium of video. In order to cause the audience to question
who they perceive to be the agent of an action, the artist has
used witty tricks within her previous work, which are coupledwith a fictional depiction of figures such as an anime character. Here, having noted the embedded stereotypes that audiences carry with regard to sensory input and the interpretationof moving images, she develops her interest in a CGI character,specifically generated through a motion-capture technique.
The artist points out that, despite the fact that it is a humandancer who gives life to this CGI character through theirmovements, as soon as we see that character moving, we forget
the actor’s existence. With this backdrop, Momose creates asituation where an actor and character face each other, in ahypothetical realm. In doing so, she deals with the uncertainty
of subjectivity, questioning a monocular point of view, and its
attendant preconceptions. Throughout history the phallocentricgaze and male desire have produced a distorted representationof the feminine body. Referring to a classic motif of the femme
fatale with criticality, the work succeeds in the multi-layered
subversions of the positions of sight and agency, to call for theemancipation of oppressed sexualities. The artist, who sees
patriarchy an illness that women internalize, deconstructs theoriginal drama that the body experiencing life, sexuality anddeath. In so doing, she suggests active, desiring agents insteadof the body as an object of desire and gaze.
While the two works reveal the politics of gaze, a thirdpiece, Social Dance — a documentary that re-enacts a woman’sconversation with her ex-partner — depicts the discrepancies
present in the visual mode of communication that is sign language. Using an interview that she conducted with a deaf
female dancer, the artist wrote a narrative based on the interviewee’s personal experience, which became the basis of
the work. In the video, a woman lies in bed talking through sign
language to her ex-partner. She is expressing her upsets andfrustration at his past words and deeds, including her bottled-up
feeling of being rejected. At times her hand movements convey
a sense of her own hesitation, the gestures modulated andrestricted. The conversation is raw and emotional, her partner
reaching out in what would normally be understood to be a
caring gesture, to touch her hands in comfort. Ironically,
however, this is also a muting touch, that prevents her fromcontinuing to speak. One senses that our hands, which function
both as a language and an emotional apparatus, reflect our
inner states closely. At the same time hands are an intimatecontact zone, which help us to feel assured and “in touch” with
our relationships, providing intimacy, trust and acceptance.
Her words — “I was certainly feeling like my body became
invisible” — and her gestures disappear into thin air, while herbody exists in inexplicable but absolute distance in relation to,and disconnection from him. This seemingly solid, but stillvulnerable relation, which could fall apart in mere seconds,
could be interpreted as the ambiguities that unavoidably arisein acts of caring and understanding one another.
Momose’s work captures the disquieting, imbalanced nature of the relationship. Something remains suspended in theair, that disrupts the way that things should really be. The audience may feel slightly uncomfortable beneath the gaze of herworks, which sharply question the judgement and ethics of theaudience themselves. Poetically woven narratives, preciselyconstructed theatricality, and her forceful shifting of boundaries: all these aspects together create a tension that disturbs
and disrupts the viewer’s feelings, urging them, one might say
psychoanalytically, to question the structure and system ofbodily representation. Her practice expresses the ambiguity

and vulnerability of the body, often examining the interconnectivity of the affect and corporeality. She sees her body as
being connected to the unheard, invisible bodies, as well as
being moulded and shaped by the inter-generational collective
memories that exist beyond time and place. Her acts of disconnecting movement and voice from the body, stripping them of
their labels, and doubting one’s own body are an exercise infacing preconceptions and existing systems, and deviating fromthem. The artist is aware of the grammar of video making,which can manufacture empathy, sympathy, and the sensational, as well as the political aspects of shooting and editing
film, a medium whose intrinsic potential to exercise violent
power is often overlooked. She turns these potentially oppressive tools against themselves, using video to explore the position of the body and its uncertain relation to the other. Theartist stands somewhere else and blinks as if she is releasing
the shutter of the camera. When her gaze, and that of thestanding-here-audience intersect beyond space, there may exista phase where both the one who is seeing and the one being
seen stand on the same horizon.
Text by Miwa Negoro

Proofread Ella KrivanekAy a M O M O S E

Born in 1988, currently lives and works in Tokyo. Momose completed an MFA in Oil Painting, at Musahino Art University in2013. Momose’s early work involved capturing video of performing arts acts, uses video to reveal the relationship between
the cameraperson and the subject. Her recent solo exhibitions
include: “Borrowing the Other Eye” (ESPACE DIAPHANES,Berlin, 2018), “Voice Sample” (Yokohama Museum of art, 2014).
She has participated in group exhibitions “Happiness is Born inthe Guts” (Municipal Gallery Arsenał, Poznan, 2019), “RoppongiCrossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice” (Mori Art Museum,2016), “Artist File 2015 Next Doors: Contemporary Art in Japanand Korea” (The National Art Center, Tokyo and National
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2015–2016),
and “SENSOU-GA STUDIES” (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum,2015). In 2017 she stayed in New York (Triangle Residency)
for six months as a recipient of a grant from the Asian Cultural
Council and in Seoul (SEMA Residency). The film Exchange
Diary in collaboration with Im Heung-soon was nominated forthe 20th Jeonju International Film Festival in 2019. She exhibits
her works internationally.

Organized by Aya Momose
Curated by Miwa NegoroProduction management Ichiro Fujimoto
Graphic design Atsushi Kumagai
Cooperation Atsushi Adachi, Yoshiaki Takahashi (EFAG EastFactoryArtGallery), Artists’ Guild
Supported by Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)