Feminist Embroidery Art by Ruri Clarkson
I came across an exhibit of embroidered art in a shop in Shibuya, Tokyo a couple days ago and I thought I'd share some of the art and artist's statements on here. I think they convey a lot of ideas around gender and family in Japan from a Japanese feminist artist.
The title of the collection is 悶悶WORDS ― 家族のことば刺繍 2021 Imposing Words-Contemporary Family Matters
母 - mother
Artist statement: "I take powerful words with loaded meaning and give them a body on a soft cloth to weaken it’s power. When I gave birth, everybody around me started to refer to me as “Mother” rather than by my name, as if my identity had gone suddenly from Ruri to “Mother” overnight. The word “Mother” is a spell that blinds people of the real woman
おひとりさま
This word has two meanings. One meaning is one person/one customer. The second meaning is an unmarried woman without children over 30 years old.
美人 - Beautiful woman
This word is made up of two characters. 美 means beautiful. 人 means person. Together they mean "Beautiful woman".
Artist statement: "ワーママ pronounced Wa-mama short for the English word “Working mom” is a term I started to hear last year. It’s a word that seems to be embraced by businesses and working moms alike. Japanese language incorporates many English words in such a manner to replace a Japanese word that became fraught with the ghosts of the past. Wa-mama exudes light-heartedness, independence and newness compared to the Japanese."
主婦 - Housewife
"The word housewife triggers both feelings of adoration and condemnation. When someone called me “Shufu” for the first time a shiver went up my spine. It sounded like a failure to me because I was groomed and educated by my parents to work at a big corporation. The first character reading “Shu” also means God, so I adorned the doily with angels as if to ironically revere the Shufu."
第三号被保険者 National Health Insurance Type 3
"A typical beneficiary of National Health Insurance Type 3 is a housewife without income with a spouse who is a salary worker. Some people feel resentment towards these wives, as their insurance is paid not by their husband but from the pool of tax of the entire salary worker population."
Japan has a family registry system (called koseki - 戸籍), Japanese law requires households to report births, deaths, marriages and divorces among other things, which are recorded in their register. The family register system has received criticism for privacy concerns, it contains a lot of personal information which can be makes discrimination against certain groups possible. There is also criticism as only Japanese citizens can be registered, so in the case of international couples with children the Japanese parent is registered as having the child but not the foriegn parent, they are registered in a different way to Japanese citizens. It is also very difficult for transgender people to change the gender in their family register they have to meet specific conditions including sterilisation.
A married couple must choose who will be the "head of the household", and generally it is the man (98% of head of households in Japan are men). If the couple is a foriegn man and a Japanese woman, then she is the defacto head of the household due to how the system treats foriegners differently to Japanese citizens.
Other members of the household must change their surnames to be the same as the head of household. Foriegners are exempt from this.
"If you’re an office worker, working from home became standard this year. I remember I requested to work from home when I was having a difficult pregnancy 14 years ago, but they said “We can’t bend the rules just for you”
育メン
"Iku-men means men who “help” raise their own children. “It’s not babysitting when it’s your own child!” is a line that comes to mind."
Ruri Clarkson's website - twitter - instagram
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
areudirty
turnnoffyourmind
amandla
