A New Spring Dawn

Each season is evocative of something, yet springtime remains unique. It is the season of renewal, the beginning of a new cycle, whether political—the Arab Spring or the Prague Spring for example—or natural. In her series of photographs entitled Human Spring (2018-2019), Lieko Shiga returns to the village in which she lived in Miyagi Prefecture, destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, on the dawn of the changing season. Seven years after the events, rebirth appears like a spring, but in what psychological state did it leave the locals?

Born in Aichi in 1980, the artist studied Fine Art New Media at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. She now lives in Miyagi Prefecture in Japan.

Face to face with the future

The series Human Spring is the final part of a trilogy preceded by the series Rasen Kaigan and Blind Date. Taking the form of a portrait of a young man with an enigmatic attitude, the series is almost mystical in the way it depicts local inhabitants evolving in an environment still couched in the stigma of its recent history. This plays out under saturated and digitally manipulated lighting where the young man gets lost in nature, with both man and nature under perpetual assailment. The series was presented in April 2019 at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum—symbolically coinciding with the end of the Heisei era. It puts spectators face-to-face with humanity and its environment and the direct influences of what surrounds us, our way of life, our psychological equilibrium, and our state of mind.

In an interview with Tokyo Art Beat, the artist explains, ‘scenarios I create for my work are a means to instigate moments of unpredictability.’ Hers is a body of work full of sombre and disquieting details that draw in the viewer and interrogate a new means of relating to the individual and humanity, pursuing adventure and a sense of existence.

Human Spring (2018-2019), is a series by Lieko Shiga and is published by Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.