Fumiko's playground

[imomus]

The first thing I ever saw by Fumiko Imano was a 2002 piece on the ShowStudio site called Dream Closet. In it, Fumiko videos herself trying on expensive clothes in London fashion stores. There's something furtive about it; we're voyeurs of an obsessional, escapist private ritual, glimpsing someone else's narcissistic fantasy games. Then, on May 1st last year, while making a podcast in Paris, I ran into Fumiko in person. She was working at the time in select store Colette, up in the art gallery. She was dressed in pom pom slippers and a zigzaggy dress, and I shyly asked if I could take her picture. Not fitting any existing hipster or subcultural stereotype that I could identify, Fumiko seemed like an eccentric, a one-off, a Yayoi Kusama character floating around the fringes of the fashion world. "The most interesting-looking person I've seen in Paris," I reported at the time.



So I was delighted to see that Fumiko was holding an exhibition of photographs of herself (called, ironically, "I Look At You") at Ideal Showroom at Cafe Moskau during Berlin Fashion Week. "Every day life scene is Fumiko's playground," said the Jinglishy blurb of these self-portraits from the last seven years. "Whenever she gets inspired by beauty of any sense, finds a story or a concept or a scene, she sets the camera, pauses on her stage looking through the lens for an unseen future audience. So her picture concludes when she confronts her viewer directly, pretending to have a small affair. Until you see her, Fumiko is waiting to look at you."

Rather than a "small affair", Fumiko and I had a 12-minute conversation about her work, which I find reminiscent of the self-portraits of African photographer Samuel Fosso, star of the Africa Remix exhibition currently on show at the Mori Museum, Roppongi Hills. In a Guardian article about Fosso, the Central African dandy is quoted as saying:

"When I'm taking a self-portrait, I'm not looking to find out more about Samuel Fosso. I'm searching first of all to see my beauty. That's how I started. When I look at myself in the mirror, I am not looking to find out if what I see is an Ibo, a Central African or even a black American. The only thing I can see is Samuel Fosso, who is trying to make himself as handsome as possible before taking a self-portrait."

In our conversation, Fumiko attributes her self-portraiture to a childhood complex about her looks and figure. When I ask if her work is "political", she demurs. "Life is about clothes and food and how to live and stuff... I think it's very important... We don't know from where to where is politics."

Video conversation between Momus and Fumiko Imano (14 minutes, Google Video). If it's taking a while to load, you can watch this film of Fumiko on a shoot in Paris to pass the time.

Comments

[dzima.livejournal.com]

During one of my pilgrimages around Japan, I actually went to Fumiko's hometown of Hitachi, which is located somewhere along the coast in between Mito and Sendai.

The city is basically comprised of a train station, a shopping strip, a big modern Hitachi headquarters building, a few green lush mountains and an empty dirty beach.

Because of her designer fashion obsession, Fumiko seems to be going through a Shimotsuma Monogatari (http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/drama/shimo/shimo.html) phase. Or maybe it's just an Ibaraki girl complex.

[(Anonymous)]

And you're just going through the idiot phase, idiot. Nice reduction!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Shimotsuma Monogatari thing does seem very clearly Gothic Lolita (http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/drama/shimo/s345.jpg) in style. I don't see Fumiko as Gothic Lolita at all, though, and when I ask her in the interview if that movement has been an influence, she says it hasn't.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It's just that I noticed the topic coincidence of "girls from the outskirts of Tokyo dressing up to satisfy their fantasies" in these two works. The difference is that Fukada and Tsuchiya are Goth Lolis and Fumiko likes expensive clothes.

Hitachi (off topic)

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I biked to Hitachi once, it is very close to Tokai-Mura, the japanese atomic village (where they once had a horrible accident while carrying around nuclear waste in buckets..), which I visited for research purposes. It is, as you say, basically just a big factory, but also have a nice fish market with lots of bizarre fish and a pretty good conveyor-belt sushi bar. Nice memories.

/bug

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i'd say what she does has a lot more in common with something like purple magazine cca 99 - 01 (http://www.purple.fr/archive.php?c=5&a=24), particularly mark borthwick's stuff than Shimotsuma Monogatari . or http://www.purple.fr/archive.php?c=5&a=30

[(Anonymous)]

i just wore black dress twice by accident, and you say goth lolita?
ibaraki girl complex? i never had complex about it.my childhood was in brasil so. im much more complex about being japanese. you sound very japanese to me even you are not..

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Is this Fumiko Imano?

I never said you're goth lolita, what I wrote in my comment was basically a (bad) comparison based on a fleeting thought I had.

It sounds like we have in common a complex (or are complex) about childhood in Brazil and adult life in Japan.

[(Anonymous)]

somehow my life is about being stranger since my childhood. i had really hard time when i was child especially when i came back to own country at age of 8. i hate to be in the group because people can be so mean. i dont like to wear same culture thing to share same style. im not into culture at all. im totally ignorant. i dont care 70's 80's goth lolita or punk or what ever... why do you have to categolize things, and want to say blah blah shit? im japanese, asian,woman, black hair, brown eye,wearing black that day,etc etc.. somehow it can be "political" in someway... very interesting! dont you think?