Japanese-born artist Yu Araki is currently presenting his site-specific video installation "Angelo Lives," (2014) at Nakameguro's quirky The Container art space.
Literally a shipping container housed inside a hair salon, the small gallery is known for giving artists free rein to reinterpret the unique space, and Araki's video piece is no exception. Under the curatorial eye of Shai Ohayon, the exhibition, "Wrong Translation," is the artist's first solo show in Japan.
The 15-minute video piece begins as a journey across the seas, with the audience huddled inside the darkness of the shipping container — a set up that emphasizes Araki's recurring motif of the voyeur. Throughout "Angelo Lives," Araki intersperses imagery taken from a video-camera held in his mouth. Sometimes viewers are locked inside, looking outward from within, moving with the artist in his travels. Sometimes the mouth is duplicated, turning into a pair of lonely eyes, echoing Araki's fascination with the artist's marginalized viewpoint.