Introduction

This issue's "Japan in LA" section features the exhibition "RECONNECTING: A Vision of Unity by Kengo Kito" at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles (June 16–September 6, 2021). Presented during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kengo Kito's (b. 1977) expansive, amorphous installation, consisting of 2,021 multi-color linked hula-hoops and thematizing unity, was also intended to commemorate the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games. While this artwork is centered on the breaking and dislocating of plastic hoops, it is also about the practice of assembling and building, one thing after another. The installation is, therefore, a space of transformation, reconnection, and galvanization in a time of intense stagnation, disconnection, and anxiety. In this respect, the massive hula-hoop presentation entails an imminent sense of urgency. As Meher McArthur (Art and Cultural Director, JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles) points out in her curatorial statement, the formal indefinability in the way Kito employs hula-hoops—a circle becomes a line and vice versa, in the artist's words—and the emptiness that each hoop contains can be associated with the teachings of Zen Buddhism. In his short essay, Duncan Williams (Professor of Religion, American Studies and Ethnicity and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California and also an ordained Soto Zen priest), references such connectedness between Kito's contemporary creation and Zen Buddhist art, philosophy, and practice. An interview with the artist himself by Miwako Tezuka (Associate Director, ARAKAWA+GINS Reversible Destiny Foundation) provides a glimpse into Kito's range of works, his didactic role as a professor at Kyoto University of the Arts in the country's contemporary art scene, and his future projects. Finally, this section features Los Angeles-based artist Aiko Hachisuka and her approach to collecting, disfiguring, and refiguring old garments in her soft sculptures, work that can be seen as comparable to Kito's. What separates their work, perhaps, and therefore makes their creations distinctive, is that Hachisuka's work suggests ghosts of bodies and memories associated with patterns, shapes, and materials. In contrast, the colors and forms, including the contained void, in Kito's RECONNECTING exhibit function at a remove from any spatiotemporal grounding.