Yokohama Triennale 2014
By Elaine W. Ng
Although young when compared to the more established, neighboring festivals such as the Gwangju or Taipei Biennial, the Yokohama Triennale is Japan’s most international festival platform, which was first launched in 2001. Located in the country’s second largest city, and just a short 30-minute train ride from Tokyo, this year’s edition was curated by the acclaimed artist Yasumasa Morimura—known for his self-portraits based on iconic figures from art history and pop culture. Morimura’s title for the Triennale, “ART Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into the Sea of Oblivion,” references Ray Bradbury’s dystopian sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451, which envisions a society where books and independent thinking are forbidden. Morimura has taken Bradbury’s 1953 classic as a reference in which to divide his exhibition into the following 11 “chapters”: “Listening to Silence and Whispers”; “Encountering a Drifting Classroom”; “ART Fahrenheit 451”; Laboring in Solitude”; “Wrestling With the World”; “Impersonal Chronicles: Still Moving”; “Monologues by the Enfants Terribles”; “Vanishing Into the Light”; “Peforming ‘Fahrenheit 451’”; “Days after Deluge”; and “Drifting in a Sea of Oblivion.” Here are some highlights from the festival, before it closes for good this coming Monday.
