Hanayo at the Gallery Koyanagi
by Monty DiPietro

I remember the first time I met Takashi Murakami, now
one of this country's leading international art stars. Itwas in the late summer of 1998, just as the neo-pop
painter's career was really taking off. Entertaining acircle of admirers in the street outside his Tomio
Koyama Gallery opening party, Murakami was a study
in irreverence -- underdressed in a pair of knee-length
khaki shorts and a dirty t-shirt, chomping on a fat cigar,booming laughter. Being new on the staid Tokyo artbeat, I was immediately impressed with Murakami'scockiness. It seemed he had borrowed a page from
Andy Warhol's book (actually Murakami has taken
whole chapters from Warhol's book), specifically thepart that says an artist's public image often plays abigger role in advancing their reputation than does thework they produce.
Because there is still such a dearth of 'characters' on
the Tokyo art scene, it was a real treat to meet thepositively wacky Hanayo Nakajima last week. The 32
year-old, Berlin-based "Hanayo," as she calls herself,has built quite a cult following in Europe and America
over the last decade. The multi-disciplinary artist is now
in at the Gallery Koyanagi, on the Ginza Strip, where
she is showing some 50 color photographs.
These are recent works, taken over the last 18 months,
but you wouldn't know that by looking at them. Hanayo
uses an old camera and -- I'm guessing because she
won't say -- out of date or treated film, with the resultthat her prints have the sort of soft-focus, pale-hued
look of 1960s snapshots. The print sizes and frametypes vary throughout the show, and many of thepictures are of Hanayo's now five year-old daughter,Tenko, which further reinforces the old-family-snapshot
aesthetic Hanayo has created here.
These are personal and fairly intimate glimpses of theworld that a mother sees through the eyes of her youngdaughter. Although most of the backgrounds and thus
the locations are vague at best, it certainly seems thatHanayo and Tenko get around. A manic existentialism
in the stream of images communicates a shared love oflife, while bringing about a sort of real-time nostalgia -the present is gone, Hanayo is saying, bring on thepresent.
Hanayo's pictures have their appeal, but they are notnecessarily being shown in as respected a gallery as
the Koyanagi on their own merit. The reason they are
here, and what is more interesting anyway, is Hanayo
herself.
Weird is the word to describe Hanayo's background:
She was born in tokyo, the daughter of scientist, andher late teens to train as a "junior geisha," publishingan account of the experience in her 1991 book,"Oshakuchan No. 1." She got a scholarship, and went
truant at the ne plus ultra of French academia. Hanayo
then became an au pairs girl, but out of boredom madea point of stealing from her Parisian employers. Shewas caught and deported, ended up in Tokyo where
she hosted the television show "Super Natural-Nenten
Story," got involved with musicians and bands such as"Violent Onsen Geisha," and released an album,"Queen of Pseudo Psycho," with "Vapid Dolly," (greatband namer, Hanayo is -- her latest ensemble is called"Pain Cake (with Locust Fudge).") Hanayo has done
theater, stared in a Shane O'Sullivan film, and modeled
for a Jean Paul Gaultier advertising campaign. She onrecord saying the duty of a woman is to be acompanion to a man, and she admires the writing of

Yukio Mishima, whom she has referred to as her "onlyreal teacher." Some people say Hanayo's two front
teeth are removable.
Fact or fiction? A little of both, I would guess, but it
doesn't really matter -- an image is an image, evenwhen it's an illusion.
Hanayo plays a little game when I talk to her at theKoyanagi opening party. She pretends to be devastatedwhen I tell her I want to mention the type of camera
she uses to achieve the effects in her pictures. She
pouts, her eyes pleading, "Please, that's a secret" andnow coquettish, "don't tell, please…" I find myself
thinking that Hanayo has bought me into her
confidence, and that gives me a little thrill. One wants
to believe that Hanayo's behavior isn't affected, one
wants visit her world and find it extraordinary.
Last week I heard from a Canadian art writer friend that
Takashi Murakami's new show, at Toronto's respected
Power Plant Gallery, features a video of Japanese WorldWar II propaganda films spliced with images of theWorld Trade Center collapse. My friend described thework as "fallacious revisionist history" that leaves theviewer in "biting confusion." Some people, I guess, will
do anything to get noticed, and I suppose Hanayo islike Murakami in that she needs to be famous for her
art to work.
The difference, I think, is that Hanayo just can't help
being an artist. And this comes through enough at theKoyanagi to make the show fascinating.
Notes: Hanayo is showing to March 15 2002 at the Gallery Koyanagi (1-75 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo; 03-3561-1896; open 11-7; closed Sundays andpublic holidays)
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