Fujiwara boasts his first solo exhibition in Finland, It’s a Small World. The exhibition is organized by Portuguese writer and curator João Laia. The installation spans over the entire fourth floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. Open until October 13, 2024, the exhibit dives into Fujiwara’s inspiration. Visitors learn about the different media to generate works that entertain, provoke thought, amaze, and get conversations going.
Fujiwara and His Diagnosis
At the end of an extended Lapland trip, I decided to spend part of my one day in Helsinki at Kiasma to see this exhibition, dragging my husband along. He came out somewhat stunned, stating that this was one of the best exhibitions he had ever seen, and that especially the syphilis works had completely blown his mind. Syphilis? Yes, there you go. It is amazing what can inspire art. In this case it is Fujiwara’s own syphilis diagnosis, which allowed him to create Syphilis – A Conquest (2019 -), part of the Small World exhibition.
Fujiwara and His Beginnings
Fujiwara was born in England in 1982 to a British mother and a Japanese father, and spent his childhood in Japan, England, Spain, and Africa. He gained a bachelor’s degree in architecture at Cambridge before earning an MFA in 2008 from the exclusive Städelschule, an art school that only accepts 20 students from 1,000-odd applicants each year, in Frankfurt, Germany.
Since then, his works (ranging from paintings, sculpture, video, and more) have been displayed around the globe, in museums and galleries including: the MAXXI in Rome, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Tokyo City Opera Art Gallery. As an award winning artist, he’s received the Frieze Cartier Award and the Art Basel Baloise Art Prize. Fujiwara’s works are held in the permanent collections of high-brow art venues such as the Tate Gallery in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.
Fujiwara and Questions of Identity
Upon walking into the first room on the 4th floor of Kiasma, you first come across a cute cartoon bear. This bear is undergoing a search to find himself. Numerous different styles of images, including Warhol-esque soup cans explore, as part of Who the Bær, what true identity is made up of, or if it even exists. Drawing much on Fujiwara’s own international upbringing, influences of class, race, gender, and sexuality are explored in various works. The bear and visitors are left pondering what exactly makes up an individual, and how much of our perception of self is truly actualized.
The next room holds the mesmerizing Syphilis – A Conquest (2019 -) inspired by Fujiwara’s own diagnosis and battle with the disease. Just when you think, after the soul- and mind-searching battle with the true identity, an exhibition about syphilis could be rather dire and off-putting, think again.
Fujiwara lays the blame of the spread of syphilis firmly at Christopher Colombus’ feet, and he is not wrong, as the first documented cases of the illness were recorded in the mid-1400s, with many researchers suggesting that Colombus’ crew brought syphilis over to the Americas. It was not long before the disease spread, and in turn inspired – and afflicted – artists.
Artists and Syphilis
Most notably, there is Albrecht Dürer’s Syphilitic Man (1496) woodcut, and not only Dürer but also artists such as Édouard Manet, Paul Gaugin, even Vincent Van Gough, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Francisco Goya were said to have suffered and died from the disease. So, it seems that the disease and artistic inspiration have long gone hand in hand.
In Fujiwara’s case, inspiration is an understatement. For example, the sculpture of the ship, SS Delirium, (probably Columbus’ ship), is displayed somewhat tattered and being attacked by a kraken. A set of skull-dominated sculptures, Syphilitic Comrades, commemorate Gaugin, Van Gough, Goya and Lautrec, his fellow artists and syphilis sufferers. Even Dürer’s Syphilitic Man gets a visit in one of the pieces.
While these are powerful, the most interesting works chronicle Fujiwara’s interaction and story behind catching the disease. Childlike, naïve sketches and collages about Berlin’s gay scene are juxtaposed next to an image of Columbus’ ship with black sails emblazoned with dating apps. This body of work simultaneously faults Columbus and the modern dating scene for the proliferation of the disease.
The artist does not only chronicle the long history of syphilis, his own infection, and his damaging thought processes as a result, but also the cure and being able to live with both syphilis and HIV (both still rampant in Berlin’s gay scene today). Fujiwara devotes several installations to medication, such as the fabulous chain-mail coat, titled Armour (Truvada), made up of pills.
These installations are colorful, thought provoking, and thoroughly entertaining. Learning about the development of the disease as well as its impact in Fujiwara’s life is a harrowing and informative experience.
The Whimsical and A Tribute
Respite comes in the shape of It’s a Small World, in the next room, the exhibition of fairground relics and architecture reimagined, with some old favorites found among the rubble. There is, for example, a mini Yayoi Kusama pumpkin in what looks like an architect’s model, as well as a splash of gold courtesy of a tiny Jeff Koons Balloon Dog. You find fragments of Mickey Mouse and the Hulk, all bringing ruined worlds together with newly interpreted ones. Here you should linger. Despite there being only six exhibits in the room, you have to look closely, in order not to miss anything.
The next room, Joanne (2016) takes the visitor on yet another journey, in a completely different direction. This room is filled with enormous video screens depicting purely one woman, Joanne Salley. Proving yet again that everything in one’s life can be inspiring, Salley was Fujiwara’s former secondary school teacher, a teacher, artist, championship boxer, and winner of a Miss Northern Ireland beauty pageant.
Falling foul of a social media and local press hounding when students found a topless picture of hers, Fujiwara uses his installation to highlight and address the typecasting of women, which reduced his former teacher to a mere stereotype of a woman, labeled unfit to be a teacher because she is beautiful and had private photographs taken.
From Colonialism to Sexuality
If you think this was enough of an onslaught on your senses, with too many thoughts flying around your head, from your true self to syphilis to damaging tabloids, there is more.
The exhibition finishes with a couple of further displays, one being Letters from Mexico (2010 -2011). This installation is made up of a series of letters from Mexico addressed to ‘Europe,’ dictated by Fujiwara to typists at the Plaza Santa Domingo in Mexico City. Upon first glance, they seem to be written in a kind of Spanglish. Nearly impossible to read, you must say it out loud (in your head) for it to become clearer. Inspired by writings of conquistador Hernán Cortés, whose letters to the King Charles I of Castile (Spain) described the ‘discovery of Mexico’ in the 16th century, the letters deal with colonialism and a country’s identity.
Next to the letters, the brief installation, The Museum of Incest (2009), displays a fictional museum modeled on a Goldfish Bowl, designed by Fujiwara’s father. Drawings and anecdotes explore our relation to memory, sexuality, history, and architecture. In addition, themes of identity, race, ethnicity, upbringing, his parentage, and sexuality are brought forth by a television set installation playing a (fictional) interview of the artist by a journalist. This interview concludes one thing: Fujiwara is on a quest for identity and sexuality.
Overall, this truly is, to quote my husband, “a mind-blowing exhibition.” It’s a Small World is an incredible spread of creative prowess. The installations are a mix of funny and thought-provoking pieces, highlighting the inner workings of a truly talented artist. I for one will certainly be on the lookout for Fujiwara’s next exhibition.
Cover photo: Finnish National Gallery / Lisa Smeds
[Written June 2024]
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