Japanese-born and London-based Hiraki Sawa creates video works that explore psychological landscapes, unexpected worlds, and the playful interweaving of domestic and imaginary spaces. His works traverse specific, often personal, landscapes to consider memory, migration, and displacement. Asia Society invited Sawa to frame his video trail (2005), held in the museum’s collection, with a selection of works from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, echoing the approach of the exhibition (Re)Generations in the museum’s 2nd- and 3rd-floor galleries. His selection of a small-scale pair of lion-dogs (flanking the video monitor) and bixies (mythical creatures) relate to the miniaturized camel who is the main protagonist of trail. Asia Society’s beloved elephant-headed sandstone Ganesha completes the display, bringing joy, good luck, and wealth to the many who venerate the popular deity.
Sawa’s trail is looped with his works fantasmagoria (2017) and pilgrim (2022), while the artist-made monitor box on view loops dwelling (2002) and elsewhere (2003). All five videos present abstracted montages of spaces that are intimate to the artist.
