"Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children," which looks at the creativity of children, unconstrained as they are by adult notions of common sense or traditional frameworks, and the diversity of children's sensations, will end on Sunday, August 31. This is also the last round of this series. In this final commentary, we introduce a video by Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. How does the "Go-Betweens" curator view this work, shown in Japan for the first time here?
Rineke Dijkstra
I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)
2009
Video installation, 12min. (loop)
Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris / New York
Rineke Dijkstra
Children are facing this way and having a discussion. What she looks like, why she's crying ... they appear to be talking about a certain woman. She's on her way home from a funeral, her husband died in a war, she's a ghost with a grudge; thus their speculations take a mysterious, vaguely disconcerting turn.
This footage was shot in the British city of Liverpool, and what the children are looking at is a reproduction of Picasso's famous painting Weeping Woman (1937). Surveying the female figure rendered by Picasso using Cubist techniques, the children's imaginations take flight. Sparking off their friends' views, they compete to put forward their personal theories. Just when the image of a woman who has suffered a terrible fate emerges, another child comes up with a completely different interpretation: perhaps she is crying because she's happy, perhaps they are tears of joy.
While the children frowning in concentration, leaning on their friends' shoulders, and speaking in such a studied fashion certainly raise a smile, one is also left in awe of their power to imagine so much in a single picture. Going beyond the bounds of painting, they step into invisible worlds.
This awesome power of imagination is something we adults all have possessed once. Why don't we all try and awaken the dormant 'potential' and take a "trip" for a moment from this small world we call "reality"?
Text: Araki Natsumi (Curator, Mori Art Museum)
Rineke Dijkstra
I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)
2009
Video installation
12min. (loop)
Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris / New York
Photo: Takaya Sakano
■Relevant information
・"Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children"
Exhibition Period: Saturday, May 31 - Sunday, August 31, 2014
・"Go-Betweens" in a Minute
(1) Zhang O Daddy & I: No.29
(2) Kim Insook Great-grandmother and I
(3) StoryCorps Q&A
(4) Ume Kayo Junior High School Girls
(5) Suhel Nafar & Jacqueline Reem Salloum: Yala to the Moon
(6) Rineke Dijkstra: I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)
