2018/4/1

chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-D

CULTUREchim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene
Chim↑Pom have been working together for ten years, but are virtually unknown outside
Asia. As they open their ﬁrst ever exhibition in the London at White Rainbow Gallery,followed by a solo show at the Saatchi Gallery later this year, is this about...
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Felix Petty
MAY 1 2015, 6:00PM

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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-DBlack of Death (above 109, Shibuya, Tokyo), 2007, Courtesy of the artists and MUJIN-TO production, Tokyo

Chim⇡Pom have been the satirical heart of Japan's contemporary art scene for ten years now.
Their work, which has taken form in videos, installations and performances, has cut a blackly
humorous social critique through Japan's cultural landscape.
When they were starting out, and struggling to name the group, Ellie, one of their six members,
had a eureka moment whilst waiting at a level crossing in Tokyo as a train went past. She
decided on Chim⇡Pom, purely because of the way it sounded. Coincidentally, it sounds like
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-DJapanese slang, Chimpo, for penis. They didn't think about it until it was too late, and the namehad stuck. "We wanted something that sounded Japanese, we never considered the reality of
having to introduce ourselves as Chim⇡Pom all the time, and constantly having people laughand confuse it for penis," she explains. "When we get on the news," Ryuta continues, "and thecute news announcer has to say Chim⇡Pom, everyone still laughs, thinking she is saying penis."
The group, which alongside Ellie and Ryuta, contains Masataka, Motomu, Toshinori and
Yasutaka, all met around the studio of the Japanese artist Makoto Aida, whose work turns acrude, challenging eye back on Japanese society, its archetypes, stereotypes, andpsychological hang-ups. "He's a genius, but he lives like garbage," Ryuta says, "His lifestyle isso terrible. Always drinking, sleeping anywhere. But he is very special, very special." Makoto
Aida's outsider spirit informed the group. Largely self-taught, only Ellie went to art school,
they've brought a critical rebel sentiment to Japan's cultural landscape, tackling Japan's social
problems with a dextrous humour and subversive glee.
They've done up dead rats to look like Pikachu, snuck into Fukushima's nuclear exclusion zone,
led a ﬂock of crows through the streets of Tokyo, blown up Ellie's collection of Vuitton
handbags on Cambodian landmines, lived in a gallery with a rat and a crow for two weeks,wrote PIKA in the sky over Hiroshima, and staged reverse auctions of their work, where theproceeds were donated to charity, and collector's were challenged to donate as much aspossible. The bidding started at £50 million, the same amount of money that Damien Hirst's For

The Love Of God sold for.

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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-DSUPER RAT, 2006, Courtesy of the artists and MUJIN-TO production, Tokyo

But their ﬁrst piece of work remains one of their most iconic. The group captured rats,taxidermied them, painted them as Pikachu and exhibited them. "This rat is from Shibuya, andone particular street, the main street of Shibuya where all the teenagers hang out, and when I
was younger, every day I used to go there to hang out by the MacDonalds," Ellie explains.
"Then one day I saw all these girls hanging out there, eating MacDonalds and there were rats
everywhere, eating the leftover MacDonald's burgers too. There were so many rats in Shibuya,
the pest control people have tried to kill them, but they're becoming resistant to poison andcleverer than the traps. Then one day I saw a girl wandering down this street, dressed up as
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-D

Pikachu, it was so funny, to see this girl dressed up as this cartoon rat, surrounded by all thesereal, super rats." As a piece of work, in neatly sums up a lot of what Chim⇡Pom's work deals
with, tackling serious social and political issues, consumerism and capitalism's inﬂuence onyouth culture, with an iconoclastic attitude and black humour. SUPER RAT (the piece's title) isoddly cute, an uncanny memento mori playing on the corporate symbols of contemporary
culture, as well as Japan's art history, SUPER RAT sounding like Super Flat, Murakami's postmodern take on Japanese graphic art.
It's hard to imagine that these two polite, friendly, stylishly dressed individuals, part kawaii, partpunk, are the same people CNN once labelled as "the enfant terribles of Japanese art", andthat, over the past 10 years, they've consistently shocked Japanese society with their stunts andprojects.
They've also been described as neo-Dada, and they are engaged in pulling apart theabsurdity of the world, like Dada was, but Chim⇡Pom are born out of the political backgroundof the Japan that they grew up in, so it seems slightly reductive to pigeon hole them into ahistory of Western avant-garde art. But their politics are almost always espoused through thegroup's anarchic sense of humour and earnest endeavour. It's surprising then, that with workthat's so funny, and so politically engaged, that they are only just exhibiting in England.
Maybe it's because their work is so engaged with the unique and peculiar obsessions ofJapanese society? Whether it's the long and dark shadow nuclear weapons and energy havecast over Japan, from Hiroshima to Fukushima via Godzilla, or simply Pokémon, the make-up of
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-DJapan's society, the peculiarities of it's youth and consumer cultures. But as Ellie explains it's notlike nuclear apocalypse wasn't a worldwide paranoia for much of the second half of the20th Century, it just casts a darker shadow over Japanese history. And it's not like capitalism,
globalisation and environmental disasters haven't affected most of us.

Real Times, video still, 2011, Courtesy of the artists and MUJIN-TO production, Tokyo

After the earthquake in 2011, and the meltdown at Fukushima, the group embarked on a seriesof works that examined this peculiar moment in Japanese history, seeking to "create somethingthat people will look back on" Ryuta says. One performance saw them enter the exclusion
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-Dzone around the power plant and document what they saw, and engage in pieces ofperformance art. At a time when no other media organisations dared to go within 30
kilometres of the reactor, Chim⇡Pom were getting up close and personal with it. "In our work,"
Ryuta explains, "maybe what you can point to is interacting with reality. That's why we called it

Real Times. There are many artists who represent society through a painting or making asculpture. I believe that art can inﬂuence society, but only because art can go to places otherthings can't. And we've always gone to the heart of things."
In Shibuya Metro station there's a giant mural by Okamoto Taro, 6 metres high and 30 metres
long, called The Myth of Tomorrow, it's like a Japanese Guernica, a tribute to the horror of war,and Chim⇡Pom snuck in and under the watchful eyes of security guards managed to insert apanel referencing the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, and Japanese social media went mad.
"We didn't know how people would react," Ellie says, "but it's such an important piece of art
for Japanese society, we didn't want to damage it, so we made the work in a way that wasvery easy to take down. But no one realised at ﬁrst. So it stayed there overnight."

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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-D

It's The Wall World, Installation view: "Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2014," Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Bangladesh,2014, Courtesy of the artist and MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo

Their fascination with Fukushima continues in another project, Don't Follow The Wind, a groupshow they've initiated within Fukushima's exclusion zone. They've described it as "art for future"
as no one will be able to see it until the radiation around the nuclear reactor dies down
enough for the area to be visitable again.
The piece they are exhibiting, at London's White Rainbow gallery, is uncharacteristicallysubdued. A wall sized combination of puzzle pieces embedded into the gallery's white cube
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-D

space. Each puzzle piece is taken from a wall from around the world, and replaced with apiece from the gallery, from Hiroshima, to Liverpool, to Dhaka in Bangladesh, exploring therelationship's that make up the world we live in, from it's wall pieces taken from Tokyo andLondon's fashion stores juxtaposed next to pieces of wall from the Bangladeshi factories thatmake these clothes.
Finally making a splash in Europe seems a ﬁtting way to celebrate their tenth anniversary as acollective, "We haven't really changed," Ellie explains, "I guess you could say we're as freshas we were when we started, or maybe we just never grew up?"chimpom.jp

Credits

Text Felix Petty
Images courtesy Chim⇡Pom and MUJIN-TO production, TokyoSHARE

TWEETtagged: white rainbow, ellie, chim-pom, felix petty, ryuta, super rat
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chim↑pom are the subversive face of japan's contemporary art scene - i-D

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