This work with a very long title has a doubled structure. It has its original structure that was ought to be exhibited as is, as well as its transformed structure after censorship.
The censorship occurred at the Gobidai-ten (joint exhibition by five art universities) at National Art Center, Tokyo, in 2018. The candy inside a box was rejected to be exhibited as the organizer was concerned they may decay, however, was proved that their anxiety were excessive since the individually packed candies did not change at all after a year had passed. Instead, it triggered a speculation that ethnic issues could have been in the root of the rejection.
In the expression of art, there is a methodology of presenting archives of activities and/or traces of involvement of the artist in order to express their daily life. This method is practically real, as it can objectively present the social environment as is by excluding the subjective perspective of the artist. OHASHI also has a video work titled Birdwatching in which documents the everyday life of the US air-force daily flying above her.
The manager of the restaurant is Japanese, and his rejection of kindness by his Hong Kong staff might be showcasing his perspective towards different ethnics. However, this is probably only one way of seeing it, and there are many other ways of seeing as well. This is where the virtue of equivocality lies in this work, in how it guides the viewer to proactively think about discrimination from what they saw.
In the same way, the artist presents the process of censorship along with archives of the actions she had taken, and discloses the stagnated society we currently live in.
The answer lays in what we see. (ARAI Hiroyuki)
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