Simon Fujiwara’s work is intrinsically performative and interdisciplinary. His installations combine photography, film, painting, and sculpture, as he traverses his own personal biography in relation to wider thematics of history, memory, colonialism, and sexuality. The artist frequently draws on his mixed British and Japanese heritage and his experiences of living between Japan, Europe, and Africa as a child. This was an incredibly formative period for Fujiwara, as he was made aware of the hypocrisy and precarities which run throughout different cultures and the consequential similarities between different countries. With a degree in architecture, Fujiwara frequently includes these skills in his exhibitions. For example, in his ongoing project Welcome to the Hotel Munber (2006-), he built an elaborate set of his Family’s hotel and bar in 1970s Fascist Spain, reconfiguring it as an underground site for queer happenings. This piece has since been animated by performative lectures and publications, travelling to multiple locations in its nearly twenty-year history. Other durational pieces include his Who bear series (2020-), in which he created a cartoon character, a bear called “Who”, who tackles pressing questions concerning contemporary art institutions and broader issues of transnational politics. While existing in a distinctly tongue and cheek, absurdist arena, Fujiwara’s works continue to occupy a hard-hitting, darkly humorous space.
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