In 2017, the Portland Japanese Garden opened an impressive cultural village, comprised of three structures designed by award-winning architect Kengo Kuma. It was an update to the green space, which was first opened to the public in 1967, that allowed the nonprofit to embrace an exhibitions program in newfound ways. On October 5, the garden will continue these efforts with the opening of Noritaka Tatehana: Refashioning Beauty, Tatehana’s first-ever solo exhibition in North America. In addition to 13 pairs of his heel-less shoes—made famous by Lady Gaga and Daphne Guinness—the show will include many craft-based pieces created specifically for this occasion.
“There is an idiom in Japanese—onko chishin, or ‘examining the past for insights into the future,’ [which is] derived from the teachings of Confucius,” Tatehana explains to AD PRO. It's a fitting maxim for him to bring up, considering that his creative process relies on conceptualizing themes from traditional Japanese culture. “It is not an overstatement to say that the concept of Japanese fine art developed from Japanese craft," Tatehana adds. "From the Edo through Meiji periods, artisans made utilitarian objects. That is distinct from the modern era, where artists make objects of art.”
With Japan's Westernization and more recent rise of consumerism, the island nation's traditional crafts have been under their fair share of threat. Tatehana’s mission is to recognize and revive such craft-based skills by, in essence, repackaging them.
Thus Tatehana takes heel-less shoes, the distinctive sandals traditionally worn by Japan's highest-ranking courtesans, to sky-high proportions. What's more, in his Hairpin Series, kanzashi clips are dramatically enlarged and finished in lacquer.
“Tatehana has taken these symbols and exaggerated them to such a degree that they are no longer hairpins,” Laura J. Mueller, the garden's curator of art, who developed the exhibition with Christina Cacouris, a New York–based journalist and curator, explains to AD PRO. “He’s not only amplified the meaning of these symbols but also the actual objects themselves, making them purely sculptural.”
Tatehana’s Void Sculpture series is another striking example of how the artist transforms Japanese crafts whose original purpose has now been essentially rendered useless. Working directly with a master swordsmith, Tatehana submerges the resulting blade in acrylic rectangular prisms. “Since swords were prohibited after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, swordsmiths had to find new applications of their accumulated expertise in other areas of the arts,” Tatehana says.
The exhibition will occupy the garden’s small contemporary Tanabe Gallery—part of the Kengo Kuma addition—as well as the Pavilion Gallery, a larger traditional Japanese building, whose architectural details include shoji, or paper sliding doors, and garden-facing windows. For Mueller, who came to Portland from New York City in spring 2019, the garden has presented an unparalleled opportunity to explore nature’s relationship to art and design, both past and present. “As exquisite as Noritaka Tatehana’s art is, the setting of the Portland Japanese Garden is going to just set it off,” she says. “It provides amazing context in which to fully appreciate his work.”
