Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MoT)

Stopped by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoT) to look at poop. Hahaha. Yes. There're three current exhibitions going on, till the first week of July. I stopped by the rooms for 'Where My Words Belong', and Ho Tzu Nyen's 'A for Agents', but I didn't linger. I only had eyes for one artist, really — Saeborg.

One is a Singaporean artist (Ho Tzu Nyen) whose works I've seen and understand. It's hilarious when I heard a Singaporean accent explaining to me about the name 'Singapura' and 'Utama'. Okaaaay. That's a hard pass. For 'Where My Words Belong', it's a tad too cerebral. It explores language, words, perceptions and thought languages. That's too close to work things. I have no wish to think about cultural identity today.  I literally walked through it and left. 

The one I was keen to see featured the winners of Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2022-2024 — Saeborg and Michiko Tsuda. I'm not big on film installations — I only appreciate the concepts and the way it's set up in an exhibition. I walked through quickly. I was more interested in the other room.

Michiko Tsuda's video and film installations in this exhibition explore the roles of family members and others' expectations of them. The notion is rather interesting. Lots of screens and videos of characters, and audiences walking by. 

Saeborg is the creator whom I've been absolutely fascinated by. Her latex creations are ridiculously bright, colorful, cute and poignant. She has painted caricatures of the relationship between animals and humans, the slaughter of livestock, its consumption and intentional reproduction. Too bad that there isn't an artist performance on a week day, otherwise that would have been an excellent experience. 

I saw loads of inflated poop. Yay. Choya's sitters keep me updated about poop and such daily. Her poop is the only clue we all have as to whether her meds are okay, if she's feeling secure enough to toilet properly, or if her GI tract is stressed out. I LOVED THESE POOP INSTALLATIONS. They made me so happy that I was chuckling for ten minutes after leaving the room.

I like to pop by Mori Art Museum (MAM) too since so much of their focus is on commercial art or totally experimental mash-ups. This time, I went and totally didn't get 'Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei'. MAM's museum shop is fantastic for souvenir shopping. MoT is a nice medium-sized museum that is edgy enough to draw visitors, but not so experimental as to keep away traditional audiences. I enjoy their current curation. Got some postcards from their MoT's museum shop too.