Yoshinori Niwa brings together gestures that untangle the logic of capitalism

Yoshinori Niwa is a Japanese artist who works with investigating and usurping the gestures, logics and language of capitalism and commodity, particularly through engagements in public spaces, durational projects and performative actions, which take shape through conceptually driven artworks. Invited by the Prameya Art Foundation (PRAF), a recent exhibition titled Rehabilitating our Human Spirit under Capitalism brought together older works as well as a newly commissioned project that speak to Niwa’s specific oeuvre of intervention and engagement driving critiques of capitalist logic in everyday space. Curated by Anushka Rajendran, this exhibition took place at Japan Foundation and subsequently, Shrine Empire, both in New Delhi.

For the newly commissioned work, the artist began deploying flyers around the city of New Delhi, including public spaces, slipping them in magazines, and even taking out an advertisement in the Classified section. The flyer consisted of a call to action that invited “candidates” to lend the artist all their belongings for a month, in exchange for INR 1,50,000 in cash that would be paid upfront. While the poster replicates the language of a fraudulent advertisement that are overwhelmingly found stuck to electrical poles and car windshields or even scam text messages that are deployed enmasse, the request is performative yet also sincere in its claim.

Once the candidates got in touch with the artist through the phone number supplied in the advertisement, they participated in an 'audition' with Niwa, where they engaged in individual hour-long conversations with him about themselves, their possessions, and what they would or would not be okay parting with, if even for a month.

In conversation with STIR, curator Anushka Rajendran speaks about a temporary, but diverse community that the artist was able to engage with, that included people from different walks of life including printing professionals, vegetable sellers, and cab drivers. Eventually Niwa went on to select applicant and artist, Kapil Jangid, as the ‘winner’ or the one who would be able to take part in this experimental exchange.

As part of this exhibition, the work, titled Living in Someone’s Possessions is presented through a contract as signed between Jangid and Niwa, a video work, and photographs of Jangid's possessions as neat clusters of objects, all of which fit within a suitcase that Niwa is also pictured alongside. The cluster of objects are digitally photographed and reproduced as a print placed on a table as well as the walls, as if for examination at customs. This month-long exchange and series of gestures brings together a tongue-in-cheek critique of the idea of a person’s belongings being symbolic of their identity, a logic that consumerist culture would have us believe. As a point of reflection, Rajendran also mentions that the exercise altered Niwa’s initial preconceptions about the value people, especially in a metropolis like Delhi, would ascribe to their ‘material’ possessions, saying that many of the candidates were comfortable parting with their credit cards or ID cards, but were more hesitant to lend objects of personal or emotional value. In conversation about the artist’s own engagement with the ethics of such an exchange that, on face value, replicates the vocabulary of the fraud or scam, Rajendran emphasises the “human element” as primary to the conversations and interactions. Through subverting this language, Niwa creates a differently possible site that troubles the logic of an all-encompassing capitalist system.

Other works in the exhibition lay out a similar set of logics, where the artworks are in dialogue and the titles of Niwa’s works are self-explanatory in their stark, wordy compositions, that invite comparative readings of viral videos and how they circulate online. A few of the themes being explored are the myth and fetishisation of the ‘product’, the alienating quality of products and their manifestation, besides viewing capitalism as a set of rituals in itself. In exploring the aesthetics of the ‘scam’, Niwa also seems to be commenting on the idea of the ‘claim’ and the promise of capitalism and legal language that supposes a resolutory structure of (terms of) exchange. Notably, the exhibition also featured an artwork that takes the shape of a neon tube that reads Refund Items I Have Not Purchased also indicative of its title. The circular text invites rejections of the glowing promise of capitalism, confronting this very language that attempts to lure people into an exploitative system of exchange. 

Other artworks in the exhibition include Borrowing Money for 2000 Years (Delhi edition) (2023), Applauding the Products (2022), Donating Money to People In Manila Without Being Noticed (2014), Exchanging Between Turkish Lire and Euros in Istanbul Until There Is Nothing Left (2011), and Purchasing My Own Belongings Again In The Downtown (2011), all of which are fairly self-explanatory as gestures that exaggerate and obfuscate certain logics of the devolving system of capital, that implicates us, the consumer, into a never ending set of rituals in order to uphold the cult of the market-led economy.

Lastly, we can examine the video work Celebrating Karl Marx’s Birthday With The Japanese Communist Party (2013; edited in 2016). The work involved interviewing Japanese Communist Party workers and inviting them to celebrate the 195^th birth anniversary of Karl Marx. In the video work that documents the celebration, we can see 195 candles are placed in an unwieldy manner on a cake decorated with the red Communist Party flag, a universally recognisable symbol. Those involved in the production even go on to count the candles and make sure of the number, speaking to the absurdity of ritual that relies on mindless repetition. Through the interviews, it also becomes clear that the Japanese Communist Party members have become alienated from their own founding principles, especially when they are confronted with the reality of capitalism as an overarching and all-encompassing system.

Speaking critically to Niwa’s overall practice and the intention of this exhibition, Rajendran says to STIR, "I feel these touches upon the core of Yoshinori's practice: the works involve ostensibly simple actions and gestures, that can perhaps be easily replicated even, that provoke deeply critical, political conversations and make legible contradictions that we have learned to live with."

The exhibition ‘Rehabilitating Our Human Spirit Under Capitalism’ by Yoshinori Niwa was on display at Tenshin Okakura Gallery, Japan Foundation, and also at Shrine Empire, New Delhi.