University of Maryland’s The Art Gallery is excited to present an exhibition of the work of five photographers currently living and working in Japan who have chosen to use the nude to examine how our bodies mediate interpersonal relationships.
The exhibition, titled Modernity Stripped Bare: Undressing the Nude in Contemporary Japanese Photography, will feature photographs by Ryoko Suzuki, Yurie Nagashima, Ryudai Takano, Riichi Yamaguchi, and Manabu Yamanaka. These works confront a wide range of issues including gender, sexuality, physical deformation, ageing, and isolation.
“By revealing what is often left unseen, these photographers normalize the bodily experiences that are common to all of humanity and expose how isolation and prejudice are systems that operate by making certain populations invisible or visible only in socially prescribed ways,” explains curator Elizabeth Johnson. “The photographers in this exhibition are united in their assertion that we can only come to understand one another if we are willing to see one another.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, The Art Gallery will host Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture: A Multi-disciplinary Graduate Student Conference from April 22 to April 24, 2011. The conference is intended to provide a forum in which participants can explore both new and reconsidered ways in which people are harnessing the body to communicate with others and mediate our contemporary experience in the world. The conference will feature a keynote lecture by photographer Ryoko Suzuki on April 22 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., followed by a dance premier by butoh choreographer Naoko Maeshiba and composer Yoko Kamitani. Naoko Maeshiba will also lead a movement workshop on April 24 that will require pre-registration with The Art Gallery.