Chiho Aoshima Rebirth of the World Show, Anniversaries and the Importance of Taking a Break

If you were thinking about seeing Seattle Asian Art Museum’s Chiho Aoshima show, go see it. It was truly fabulous. The real knockout is a huge screen projecting an animation of a long cityscape, seascape, and island scape. On one side, a cityscape grows and changes, and pollutes the air, alien spaceships abduct cars and trucks from the roads—then a tsunami comes and destroys everything. On the other, an island dominated by a quiet volcano changes when it erupts, spilling angry red sky across the screen. These continuous repetitions and rebuildings, are apocalyptic, but the post-destruction scene ends with a giant rainbow that spans the entire screen, complete with butterflies and dragonflies zipping across. Did I mention the buildings in the cityscape all have girls’ faces, and occasionally sprout feet and walk around? Here’s “Strawberry Fields,” a painting from the exhibition, a slightly blurry depiction of the animated volcano, and Glenn and I in front of the Black Sun sculpture outside the museum. Down below you’ll see that the museum walls were also illustrated with details from Chiho Aoshima’s work, as opposed to the usual white blank walls, so it was more of a continual experience. If every museum exhibit was like this, more people would go to museums. People sat entranced before the giant screen watching the animation series over and over again.

These last few days have been all about stepping away from the laptop and smart phone and going out and interacting with the world. On our anniversary we took a day trip where we visited a lavender farm, had cocktails outdoors with live music playing, ate a delicious duck dinner with fig and cherry sauce, visited a spa with an outdoor hot tub and a bookstore – basically all my favorite things! Then yesterday we got together with my little brother to go downtown and visit the Chiho Aoshima exhibit (Mike was very valuable in pointing out things like Shinto and Buddhist symbols embedded in Chiho’s work, since he’s been to Japan many times and minored in Japanese) and celebrated Glenn’s birthday a day early. It reminded me how much better life seems when you’re not sitting in front of a computer all day, our need to unplug and venture out. I think especially for writers, it’s easy to get trapped in your own head, especially when you’re not in an especially good place, and those are the times to go out and walk in the rain (yay, rain yesterday!), eat cupcakes, and gawk at art and nature and all the things that make you happy.