Yuki Okumura’s ‘Anatomy Fiction’

The ongoing series Anatomy Fiction by artist Yuki Okumura hones in on the body and its role in representation and perception. Begun in 2008 as a series of workshops with children, the work culminated in an initial exhibition in 2010, Yuki Okumura Anatomy Fiction – rakugo version, at the gallery Misako and Rosen in Tokyo.

‘I decided to deal with a Japanese old tale that has stuck in my mind since I saw it as an animation on TV when I was very small… In this old tale, objects of physical perception shift from high up in the sky to deep inside the subject’s own body, based on an anatomical structure that is totally impossible in reality’, recounts the artist.

Born in Aomori in 1978, Yuki Okumura has worked with video, performance, sound, writing, translation, and installation. According to his website, Yuki Okumura’s ‘artistic practice predominantly departs from a kinship with works and lives of other artists, resulting in conceptual, yet deeply personal works presented in a wide array of media.’

Bodily stories

The title of the exhibition, rakugo version, refers to the Japanese art of rakugo, or storytelling. In the exhibition, rakugo performer Riko Shofukutei enacts the tale that Yuki Okumura selected. ‘Rakugo has numerous stories dealing with such fictional anatomical structures, such as Dog’s Eyes, Mt. Head, and Lantern Head,’ writes the artist. ‘In rakugo, what is in front of your eyes is merely a sole body fixed onto a zabuton cushion. This form itself may be pretty suitable to represent things that are only possible in words (stories). Rakugo can depict any kind of body structures so vividly, as long as we can take it as “possible” when referring to our everyday sensation.’

The aim of this performance was, for Yuki Okumura, to bring together a specific traditional tale and the art of rakugo in order to explore the notion of fixed bodily structures with a probing humour. 

Anatomy Fiction (2008-) is an ongoing project by artist Yuki Okumura, and the full listing of its iterations is to be found on the artist’s website.