In their endless efforts to make us see things in new ways and generally mess with our minds, contemporary conceptual artists such as Tadasu Takamine may often do more to distort their own view of the world than change the way the wider public sees it. This would explain why, in 2004, Takamine attempted to show "Kimura-san," a video of himself masturbating a disabled man, at a group exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art (YMA).
Although we could all sit down over tea and biscuits and have a big heart-to-heart on how disabled people have sexual needs too, the bluntness of Takamine's work showed both a lack of artistic wit and a callow disregard for commonly accepted norms of sexual propriety. Indeed, rather than leading to any improvement in the sex lives of the disabled, I suspect it may even have put many people off addressing the issue. The YMA, dreading a public backlash and possible legal challenges, did a U-turn and decided to pull the work from the show before it opened.
Now, seven years later, Takamine is back at the YMA, and both the artist and institution are once again keen to challenge what they no doubt see as the backward mindset that led to their previous setback.