A Playful Call to Act - The Art and Practice of Jave Yoshimoto
A conversation with Jave Yoshimoto on practice, egocentricity, and his latest show, "Desolate Microcosm"
In Fried Fruit Art Space’s latest show, “Desolate Microcosm,” artist Jave Yoshimoto immediately calls viewers to action not through threat or egregious gore, but rather through asking us to pick up the call or play a game. In this show, on view until June 6th, Yoshimoto uses familiar visual language through technology, social media, and videogames to present images of humanitarian crises around the world.
In our conversation, Yoshimoto detailed how artmaking is inherently egocentric, how it serves a purpose in making him feel more human, and the key to making it bigger than himself - what he chooses to represent. Through sharing imagery of situations such as the Syrian refugee crisis within frames like a cellphone, a Nintendo Switch, or a GoPro, his works give viewers a device that recalls familiar interactivity in order to invite them to engage with the difficult scenes they house within them.
At first the frame was a practical element of the artwork to stabilize his laser cut wood reliefs, but he quickly took the opportunity to expand the narrative through the frame. The story behind his adoption of the cellphone frame, which can be seen in the anchor work of the show, “What is your Emergency?,” comes from a firsthand account of a Syrian refugee.
To this refugee, his phone was his most prized possession. Like many did, he taped it to his chest in a plastic bag for his journey from Turkey to the island of Lesbos, Greece. It was the only thing connecting him to his family who had fled before him. He was the only one to survive the crossing on his boat. As it traveled highspeed in the night, it flipped over. When attempting to swim to the island in sight, he came across a four year old and floated with her for eight hours before he and her deceased body were found by the Greek Coastguard. Yoshimoto said the man told him that he couldn’t let go of the girl even after being pulled from the water. He didn’t want to die alone. After the shock had passed, it was his phone, safely kept taped to his heart that allowed him to find his family.
While the origin of the cellphone as a frame lies in such an intense story, it simultaneously plays with our own hyper-attachment to our phones and our means of consuming media about humanitarian crises through often exploitatively taken photographs. Yoshimoto even noted that it is a self-criticism of his own media consumption.
When volunteering with the Lighthouse Relief Project in Lesbos, Greece, he saw that photographic exploitation firsthand. When we spoke, he talked about the choice to pull out the camera and when not to, noting that BBC photographers on site were getting in the way at immensely intense moments for the refugees. He also noted the phenomenon of the “voluntourist” - someone who provided aid while taking pictures of themselves to show that they were there in the thick of it - hoping that he was not one.
“The process of receiving the story on a personal basis is very important to me and whether I relate to that story or not is very important to me,” said Yoshimoto. “That’s how I choose what I think is worth my time to explore and hopefully not retell the story in a way that is exploitative, that's not disrespectful, because it's easy to do that.”
Yoshimoto’s artistic practice did not begin this way. At first, it served a deeply personal purpose. Making paintings of bacon that brought him humor in the aftermath of his estranged mother’s death, he eventually felt that his art was treading in place. A friend and artist told him that art is inherently egocentric, and while he has found this to be true, he noted that the egocentricity of creating art does not mean that it cannot serve a purpose for others. For him, the key to this is gathering firsthand accounts of people’s lives and bringing representation of humanitarian crises to people beyond newsreels and social media posts.
“No matter what I make, it's still from me and still about me in the sense that this is how I feel about this particular topic,” Yoshimoto said. “That [travel] is something that I need to constantly keep doing in order to feel more human? I keep using that word. I want to relate, I want to understand, I want to be empathetic, I want to really see beyond my own limitations.”
This investment in seeing beyond himself and looking to others is clear in all of Yoshimoto’s work. Each relief, no matter what it depicts, is imbued with the stories that he heard and the people that he met such as that Syrian man with his phone taped to his chest. In addition, Yoshimoto’s own self-criticism intimately speaks to a shared experience among many people. Whether viewers are faced with a call from the streets of Aleppo or a video game of the COVID-19 pandemic, they step beyond what they have known of these crises and they are asked the question: will you take action?
On view until June 6th, “Desolate Microcosm” by Jave Yoshimoto, can be found at Fried Fruit Art Space. Join us for a viewing and reception tonight from 6-9pm, April 25, with the addition of a one night only pop-up exhibition of Audrey Johnson’s “Echoing Spaces.”