We would like to present the third chapter of our photographic essay documenting the Yokohama Triennale 2023, Wild Grass: Our Lives. This instalment looks at the venues hosting the exhibition past the museum itself: the Former Daiichi Bank Yokohama Branch (旧第一銀行横浜支店), BankART KAIKO, Queen’s Square (クイーンズスクエア横浜), and the Motomachi–Chūkagai Station passageway (元町・中華街駅連絡通路).
This chapter takes its title, All the Rivers, from a novel by the Israeli writer Doris Rabinyan. The exhibition bearing the same title spans two venues, BankART KAIKO and the Former Daiichi Bank Yokohama Branch. Both historical buildings were constructed around the same period as the publication of Lu Xun (鲁迅, 1881–1936)’s Wild Grass in 1927. The curatorial text describes the novel as:
“The love story of two people, one from Israel and the other from Palestine, shows us how public events can affect individual lives.”
Was it really necessary to add another layer of literary reference? It’s open to debate. By introducing yet another seemingly political thread into an exhibition already layered with various associations, be it historical or literary, the allusion to the conflict feels more gestural than genuinely engaged.
At Queen’s Square, a massive shopping mall complex situated right next to the Yokohama Museum of Art, you would find works by Keizo Kitajima (北島敬三, b. 1954) and Yasumasa Morimura (森村泰昌, b. 1951). Blending seamlessly into the surrounding architecture and easily ignored by passersby are four supersized portraits of men in white shirts, standing side by side like towering date trees.
This is the first collaboration between the two artists. Morimura, known for superimposing himself as figures from art history, appears here disguised as the Chinese novelist Lu Xun, dressed in traditional Chinese attire. Yet rather than being singled out as a literary icon, he sits among three otherwise anonymous men, becoming just another ordinary face in the crowd. As darkness descends and the lights come on, if this were a Harry Potter film, they would probably begin conversing with one another, rambling about how only a handful of passersby had stopped to notice their existence that day.
