Artist of Liminality: Miwa Yanagi’s Myth Machines as Heterotopia

In February 2020, Miwa Yanagi: Myth Machines (2019-2020), a traveling exhibition of works by the Japanese contemporary artist Miwa Yanagi (1967-), concluded its tour across Japan after failing to incite meaningful critical response from art historians and critics. The year-long, five-museum itinerary of the solo show reflected the public’s keen interest in Yanagi’s first major exhibition in a decade, but the enthusiasm was betrayed by the paucity of scholarly attention; beyond the four essays included in the catalogue, hardly any scholar or critic seriously engaged with the artist who previously represented Japan at the Venice Biennale and whose work continues to be exhibited internationally. The few texts that appeared display a noticeable anxiety toward Myth Machines—in particular its unapologetic juxtaposition of photography and theater—which suggests a failure of the prevailing art historical language to speak and write about Yanagi’s career. In response to this laconic condition, this paper identifies the concept of heterotopia, delineated by Michel Foucault on three occasions between 1966 and 1967, as a useful device to activate a discourse on Yanagi’s exhibition. A reading of Myth Machines as a heterotopia reveals an exhibition that astutely comments on the ongoing global political moment defined by divisions along racial, gender and national boundaries, visually symbolized by former American president Donald Trump’s divisive border wall.