Friday, December 9, 2016

BELINDA FUENTES REVIEWS IZIMA KAORU


            Izima Kaoru’s Untitled [Airport Corpse] is apart of series, Landscape with A Corpse in which women are stage corpses. Kaoru hires models to create the ideas by imagining their scenarios of death, including setting and wardrobe. Initially a fashion photographer, the fashion of the corpse, which is what the individual wants to be wearing when they pass, is just as important as the idea. Then the models actually get to live out their ideal death scenes by posing as the corpse. Some scenes of death appear more peaceful such as Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen #484,2007, with a close up of a woman with her eyes open. Other scenes such as Hasegawa Kyoko wears Yves Saint Laurent appears more gruesome with a women left in an alley by a dumpster. Interestingly, most of the women have their eyes open and are in fashionable clothing. Also, the death scenes include indoor and outdoor scenarios. These visions while intriguing challenge the ideas of high fashion and produce contrasting feelings toward death than usual. These scenarios design viewers to imagine and construct their own version of their deaths. Although this process may appear morbid, staging your death can make the idea of death seem less frightening. In the Huffington Post, Kaoru shares one of the goals of this series, “And I thought [‘Landscape with a Corpse’] could open the door more widely for the Japanese who tend to turn their backs on the taboos of death”. Perhaps even influence enough to stage their individual landscape with a corpse.


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