Meiro Koizumi

“Human Opera XXX” was undertaken during Merio Koizumi’s residency at the Rijksakadedemie in The Netherlands. In this work, he invites a member of the public to share a personal sad story. What ensues is an uncomfortably humorous turn of events where a local Dutch man’s personal predicament is ridiculed into an unexpected performance with prop and special effect. (press release San Art, Vietnam) A man with a scar on his forehead is made to sit down in front of a camera on a film set, and he begins to talk about his tragic life. However, during this time, the artist, his face painted silver, continues to interrupt the man by adding a range of unnecessary objects and directions. Eventually the scene in front of the camera is transformed into an incongruous drama featuring a collision between the self-centered artist's sense of aesthetic importance as he tries to capture an ideal scene, and the human ethics against an act where one attempts to handle another person as an object. This work is a reflection of my growing sense of discomfort surrounding the issues of "exoticism" and the Eurocentric power structure that I was confronted with during my two-year stay in the Netherlands. The XXX at the end of the title not only indicates the symbol of Amsterdam, where his work was created, but also represents the ubiquitous code for porn on the signs outside the porn shops that fill the city. If 'Art of the Awakening' (2005) is a masturbation device of moving images, then Human Opera XXX is a rape device that implements the violence of the moving images. (from: Meiro Koizumi, 'Human Opera XXX-Koizumi Meiro', in: Koizumi Meiro, exh. cat. Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2009, p. 13-14)