A Encounter with Tokyo Rumando
Through the images taken for ‘The Story of S’, the artist interrogates her audience's observation of the question of identity in evolution.
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
Model, author, make-up artist, and performer, Tokyo Rumando stages her body and her surroundings in the project The Story of S, published in 2018.
The Japanese artist, who works under a stage name, was born in 1980. Self taught, she has notably posed for Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, and considers herself to have become an artist in 2005. Other than using her own body in her images, often in the nude, she is interested in rakugo artists, storytellers who are steeped in the art of Japanese entertainment, working with only sparse words.
A hidden identity
In The Story of S, presented in 2018 at Zen Foto Gallery and in early 2020 at the Museum Folkwang Essen, the artist ‘incorporates theatrical elements, which transforms her self-portraits from a story into a play, performed at her own stage theatre, leading the viewer into another time and space,’ explains a press release for the exhibition.
S is Story
She=S
S=Sexualviolet
S is es
S is Sandglass
Sayonara S
The artist’s manifesto for the exhibition
In front of and behind the camera, Tokyo Rumando inserts herself into a world of photography that is often predominantly masculine. Through her black-and-white photographs, she develops her own vision of identity, sexuality, and intimacy, reworking the visual language of radical Japanese photography from the 60s and 70s. Tokyo Rumando plays with the audience, leading them to interrogate the notion of desire in relation to an identity that is in constant evolution.
Tokyo Rumando blends and adapts to the decor that she stages. Parallel to her self portraits where she takes on the person of a Geisha, Marilyn Monroe, or a femme fatale, she also captures that which surrounds her: a hairdresser or a fan, a shadow of a cat that appears in a photo, or a prison wall and its barbed wire.
Among recent projects, Rest 3000 Stay 5000 saw the artist visit around 20 brothels where she took self portraits. The work was presented at Ibasho Gallery in Antwerp.
The Story of S (2018), a photo book by Tokyo Rumando is published by Zen Foto Gallery.
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
'S', 2018 | Copyright Tokyo Rumando, courtesy of IBASHO
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