TOKYO.- Prada presents “Role Play”, an exhibition project organized with the support of Fondazione Prada, at Prada Aoyama Tokyo from 11 March to 20 June 2022. The fifth floor of the iconic building designed by Herzog & de Meuron hosts a second version of the show on view at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan from 19 February to 27 June 2022.
Curated by Melissa Harris, this project explores notions of the search, projection, and invention of possible alternative and idealized identities. Role-playing, the creation of alter-egos, and the proliferation of self are possible strategies that the artists in the exhibition employ to investigate and understand each individual’s essence and persona. As Melissa Harris points out, “An alter ego, persona, or avatar may be aspirational; it may relate to one’s personal and cultural history and sense of otherness; it may be a form of activism, or a means of maneuvering through entrenched, even polarized positions, toward empathy: putting oneself in another’s shoes.”
Since its invention, photography has been the ideal language for representing the idea of otherness, exploiting its objective nature and thus the sense of authenticity perceived in front of a photographic image. In recent decades, this medium has evolved to the point of embracing online gaming, social media platforms, and other innovative role-playing contexts, all reinforcing our obsession with the self.
The Tokyo exhibition includes photographic, video and audio works by international artists Juno Calypso, Beatrice Marchi, Haruka Sakaguchi and Griselda San Martin, Tomoko Sawada, and Bogosi Sekhukhuni, in a light installation project conceived by the creative agency Random Studio.
Juno Calypso (b. 1989, London, UK) with her photographic series What To Do With a Million Years? (2018) documents a mansion entirely decorated with pink elements and built underneath Las Vegas in the 70s to shelter in case of a nuclear attack. The house is a simulated environment currently owned by a mysterious group attempting to achieve immortality and eternal youth.
Beatrice Marchi (b. 1986, Gallarate, Italy) presents the audio work Never Be My Friend (2014) focused on one of her alter-egos, Katie. The ambiguous characters invented and interpreted by the artist address existential and social issues while ironically challenging traditions and gender stereotypes.
Through their satirical portrait series titled Typecast (2019), Haruka Sakaguchi (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan) and Griselda San Martin (b. 1978, Barcelona, Spain) address the lack of diversity in the US entertainment and film industry. To highlight this reality and reflect on racial bias perpetuated by media representation, they photographed actors embodying the typecast roles offered frequently and parts they aspire to play.
For her photographic series, OMIAI♡ (2001), Tomoko Sawada (b. 1977, Kobe, Japan) transformed herself —through the aid of costumes, wigs, make-up, and weight gain— into thirty different characters. These portraits mimic photographs traditionally produced as part of the Japanese custom of omiai, or the first meeting of couples whose marriages are being arranged, during which families exchange pictures of their children in the hope of finding a suitable partner for them.
Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991, Johannesburg, South Africa) presents Consciousness Engine 2: absentblackfatherbot (2013), a two-screen video installation that simulates the artist’s relationship with his estranged father as part of his ongoing investigation into human consciousness in an age of digital networks. The avatars of the two speakers, two disembodied heads, animated in 3D, bring to life with robotic voices an intense conversation drawn from Facebook chats that took place when the artist was eighteen years old.
