Setsuko Adachi - a portrait of Japan from a perspective that is felt through the bodies of the haunting and unnamed characters traversing through the lonely landscapes and vacant city squares in the prose-sketches, full of human warmth in the pockets of spaces remaining where the governing forces have not yet rendered them lifeless

 

Setsuko Adachi, Forever Forest Upper Field,

Incisive and loving at the same time, Forever Forest Upper Field paints a portrait of Japan from a perspective that, like the elephant in the room, is almost never breached nor openly admitted, but rather felt through the bodies of the haunting and unnamed characters traversing through the lonely landscapes and vacant city squares in the prose-sketches, full of human warmth in the pockets of spaces remaining where the governing forces have not yet rendered them lifeless, glowing in the deep of the night, that read like the voice of a lighthouse in the uncomfortable silence.

Setsuko Adachi writes a rhythmic prose that steps across the pages to remind us of the inherent beauty of the way to use the language that can at once be universal and specific. It raises a unique voice that is simultaneously foreign but also recognisably naturalised — much like the webs of metropolitan thoroughfares that she describes and brings to life. Tan Jingliang’s entrancing photographs, which accompany the text, further intensify the energy of Adachi’s stories, and provide the syncopations that befit the expansive story-telling. The images, narrating an extending vista, draws us deeper into an aesthetic that is not beyond subsuming the dystopic purely for the purpose of creating a better art, both visual and verbal. — Lim Lee Ching

I believe this collection of vignettes, this tapestry of Setsuko Adachi’s texts and Tan Jingliang’s images, this collaborative work that through keen lenses examines the “usual/normal/correct world,” exposes how society’s oppressive systems are too easily accepted by far too many people. Adachi and Tan’s work acts as a unified voice, comprised of unique, individual, independent thinkers acting through empathy; a voice putting forth a poignant warning to which this world needs to harken. — Michael Kearney

story: Azalea Hills