Pidgin [noun]
pi-jen:
A simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages*
“Pidgingo” refers both to “pidgin language” and “after pidgin” (“go” meaning “language” and “after” in Japanese). The parakeet (Inko in Japanese)—an evolving character in my work for nearly a decade—is a metaphor for immigrants who mimic language and a satirical figure that reflects the repetition of history. More broadly, “pidgin” denotes a contact language that naturally arises between local populations and foreign traders to enable communication.
The Taro Okamoto Museum of Art video installation features videos with 5.1-channel sound viewed inside and outside a bamboo cage resembling a large human birdcage.
pi-jen:
A simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages*
“Pidgingo” refers both to “pidgin language” and “after pidgin” (“go” meaning “language” and “after” in Japanese). The parakeet (Inko in Japanese)—an evolving character in my work for nearly a decade—is a metaphor for immigrants who mimic language and a satirical figure that reflects the repetition of history. More broadly, “pidgin” denotes a contact language that naturally arises between local populations and foreign traders to enable communication.
The Taro Okamoto Museum of Art video installation features videos with 5.1-channel sound viewed inside and outside a bamboo cage resembling a large human birdcage.
Installation views at Taro Okamoto Museum of Art
Courtesy of Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
photo by Makoto Matsuno
Courtesy of Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
photo by Makoto Matsuno
This sci-fi satire video installation aims to update on "war" in modern society. How does war relate to our daily lives? Where do wars originate? Why do we repeatedly wage war? And why do we rarely think deeply about or discuss war? I have focused on cultural approaches impacting people's impressions, thoughts, and visions of science and technology.
This story depicts the history of American weapons development, including nuclear and chemical weapons, AI surveillance systems, robots, and drones, as well as the consequences and voices of their victims. It also incorporates numerous references to Western and Japanese science fiction pop culture, including science fiction illustrations, novels, comics, and films, to show how these have unintentionally or intentionally contributed to the development of technologies of mass destruction.
Another distinctive feature of this work is its interweaving of texts and images from different periods and places, interweaving multiple wars while highlighting their commonalities. The works draw the viewer into the heart of this exploration by constructing a nonlinear narrative that connects multiple events: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan Project's nuclear development, the exploitation of mineral resources from colonies, the atomic bombings, the collapse of the Japanese Empire, Korean War that started during occupation for Japan under GHQ, the ongoing suffering of the victims of the nuclear bombings, the hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, the Vietnam War which marked turning points in chemical and technological warfare, and the censorship and repression we face in Gaza, the West Bank, the Congo, and the United States today.
The Risograph-printed flyer, featuring motifs such as frogs dressed as uranium miners and two kinds of cages, is a piece viewers can take home with them. In today’s world, where AI-based internet censorship is rampant, there has been a resurgence of Risograph and old print media as anti-war expression in New York. I have once again realized the potential of multimedia. The frog motif recurs in my work. In Japanese, the word “kaeru” has multiple meanings, including “frog,” “to change,” “to return,” and “to hatch.” I often use wordplay in Japanese to add the unknown meaning of the symbols familiar to Western culture.
This story depicts the history of American weapons development, including nuclear and chemical weapons, AI surveillance systems, robots, and drones, as well as the consequences and voices of their victims. It also incorporates numerous references to Western and Japanese science fiction pop culture, including science fiction illustrations, novels, comics, and films, to show how these have unintentionally or intentionally contributed to the development of technologies of mass destruction.
Another distinctive feature of this work is its interweaving of texts and images from different periods and places, interweaving multiple wars while highlighting their commonalities. The works draw the viewer into the heart of this exploration by constructing a nonlinear narrative that connects multiple events: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan Project's nuclear development, the exploitation of mineral resources from colonies, the atomic bombings, the collapse of the Japanese Empire, Korean War that started during occupation for Japan under GHQ, the ongoing suffering of the victims of the nuclear bombings, the hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, the Vietnam War which marked turning points in chemical and technological warfare, and the censorship and repression we face in Gaza, the West Bank, the Congo, and the United States today.
The Risograph-printed flyer, featuring motifs such as frogs dressed as uranium miners and two kinds of cages, is a piece viewers can take home with them. In today’s world, where AI-based internet censorship is rampant, there has been a resurgence of Risograph and old print media as anti-war expression in New York. I have once again realized the potential of multimedia. The frog motif recurs in my work. In Japanese, the word “kaeru” has multiple meanings, including “frog,” “to change,” “to return,” and “to hatch.” I often use wordplay in Japanese to add the unknown meaning of the symbols familiar to Western culture.
Video - Pidgingo-no-Inko
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Pidging-no-Inko excerpts
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2025
20 min This work explores the cycle in which these weapons and systems have historically been tested overseas, reimported into the country, and used to capture activists and immigrants who are inconvenient to the state. Researching the history of nuclear weapons required me to visit many sites and interview Hibakusha(global nuclear victims) to understand the history and ongoing suffering. The video builds on my research trips to the nuclear-related facilities in the United States and Japan, interviews with survivors and specialists, and my ongoing research using books and digital media. The end credits list the facilities and locations photographed in the video: Historic Wendover Air Field (UT), White Sands Missile Range (NM), Sandy Hook Nike Missile Range (NJ), El Paso-Juárez Border (TX), and the National Border Patrol Museum (TX). The end credits do not list all the locations I visited: the science and history museums and facilities in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, the Hanford Site, Historic Wendover Field, Pearl Harbor, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those locations do not appear as photographs, but are in my paintings used in the video—30 paintings and drawings — and narrate background information about these locations visually. Adding to these processes, in a rapidly unfolding world war, our reality as we watch livestreams has become mediated via digital media. In this work, I also centered on words and stories I heard from friends I met at protests in New York and survivors and their families still under blockades, bombings, forced relocations, and famine. |
Featured paintings and drawings in the video
Einstein Letter
2024
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
I re-found the Einstein letter at "Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection" at Christie's show. This letter already mentioned information about the Congo, a place that is a uranium resource. The owner of this letter, Paul Allen, was the co-founder of Microsoft. His collection, including this letter, became a hint for me to construct a narrative about the current war situation because it includes significant elements of science and technological history. Especially his collection for various computers, including high-speed IBM and Apple, games, a 3D printed car, research on gorillas by a renowned palaeontologist and archaeologist, a Titanic luncheon menu, crucial artifacts from the Space Race, and a four-rotor Enigma cipher machine, which shows his vision, explains our current world.
I used the famous archive photo of Einstein and Leo Szilard discussing writing a letter to President Roosevelt.
2024
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
I re-found the Einstein letter at "Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection" at Christie's show. This letter already mentioned information about the Congo, a place that is a uranium resource. The owner of this letter, Paul Allen, was the co-founder of Microsoft. His collection, including this letter, became a hint for me to construct a narrative about the current war situation because it includes significant elements of science and technological history. Especially his collection for various computers, including high-speed IBM and Apple, games, a 3D printed car, research on gorillas by a renowned palaeontologist and archaeologist, a Titanic luncheon menu, crucial artifacts from the Space Race, and a four-rotor Enigma cipher machine, which shows his vision, explains our current world.
I used the famous archive photo of Einstein and Leo Szilard discussing writing a letter to President Roosevelt.
Conquer Hat
2025
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
This painting juxtaposes an illustration from H.G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1898) with an archival photograph of atrocities committed in the Congo Free State (1885-1908), under the absolute rule of Belgian King Leopard II: the amputation of Congolese civilians. I got this idea from my realization that the pith helmet (safari helmet), standard headgear worn by colonial troops in the 19th century, resembles a UFO. This drawing is also my criticism of H.G. Wells's statement that the brutal Martians in The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for empire. Fictional stories can blind readers to reality. This is a classic example of this, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously. While the tale skillfully portrays the atrocities of the aggressors, the question is who the oppressed are in the story. The downtrodden in fiction are often different from the oppressed in real life. The right corner of the hat depicts a scene from Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of "War of the Worlds." This 2005 version also repeated the same problem. The boy reading a book atop a cherry tree is Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), who became interested in space after reading this science fiction novel about England being invaded by Martians, and dreamed of how wonderful it would be to make a device to go to Mars. In the empire, people colonized, and their children dreamed beyond. Twenty-eight years later (1926), he invented the world's first liquid-fuel rocket.
The central golden cup depicts a robin, the national bird of the United Kingdom, and Palestinian sunbirds surrounding an orange. The orange is dropped, and below it, a cup representing the Empire of Japan flies in with a jet to catch it. Inside the cup, the people of the Marshall Islands bow to the Emperor. After World War I (1914-1918), Japan, modeled on modern Europe, positioned itself in the middle of a class structure with Western Europe at the top and Asia and Africa at the bottom. It continued to adopt a dominant yet discriminatory attitude toward other parts of Asia. As a victorious nation after World War I, the Empire of Japan, Britain, and France participated in the division and appropriation of the territories and colonies of the defeated nations, Germany and the Ottoman Empire. At the conference that recognized British Palestine as a League of Nations mandate, Japan was also recognized as having control over the former German South Sea Islands as a mandate. This was a mutual recognition deal between the victorious nations.
2025
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
This painting juxtaposes an illustration from H.G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1898) with an archival photograph of atrocities committed in the Congo Free State (1885-1908), under the absolute rule of Belgian King Leopard II: the amputation of Congolese civilians. I got this idea from my realization that the pith helmet (safari helmet), standard headgear worn by colonial troops in the 19th century, resembles a UFO. This drawing is also my criticism of H.G. Wells's statement that the brutal Martians in The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for empire. Fictional stories can blind readers to reality. This is a classic example of this, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously. While the tale skillfully portrays the atrocities of the aggressors, the question is who the oppressed are in the story. The downtrodden in fiction are often different from the oppressed in real life. The right corner of the hat depicts a scene from Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of "War of the Worlds." This 2005 version also repeated the same problem. The boy reading a book atop a cherry tree is Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), who became interested in space after reading this science fiction novel about England being invaded by Martians, and dreamed of how wonderful it would be to make a device to go to Mars. In the empire, people colonized, and their children dreamed beyond. Twenty-eight years later (1926), he invented the world's first liquid-fuel rocket.
The central golden cup depicts a robin, the national bird of the United Kingdom, and Palestinian sunbirds surrounding an orange. The orange is dropped, and below it, a cup representing the Empire of Japan flies in with a jet to catch it. Inside the cup, the people of the Marshall Islands bow to the Emperor. After World War I (1914-1918), Japan, modeled on modern Europe, positioned itself in the middle of a class structure with Western Europe at the top and Asia and Africa at the bottom. It continued to adopt a dominant yet discriminatory attitude toward other parts of Asia. As a victorious nation after World War I, the Empire of Japan, Britain, and France participated in the division and appropriation of the territories and colonies of the defeated nations, Germany and the Ottoman Empire. At the conference that recognized British Palestine as a League of Nations mandate, Japan was also recognized as having control over the former German South Sea Islands as a mandate. This was a mutual recognition deal between the victorious nations.
Land of Profane
2025
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
The central image depicts the plutonium core and encasing block developed during the Manhattan Project, along with the face of American chemist and industrial leader Charles Allen Thomas (1900-1982). His ears are attached to the side.
In 1943, Thomas was tasked with developing a method to isolate polonium, the rare element selected as the detonator for the plutonium bomb (Dayton Project). This detonator was code-named "urchin."
Thomas commissioned Monsanto to develop technology to refine polonium industrially and combine it with beryllium to create the "urchin" detonator. Thomas conducted this research in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and the polonium produced there was shipped to Los Alamos and assembled into the detonators for the Gadget and Fat Man bombs. Thomas was one of many scientists who witnessed the culmination of this research with the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945. Thomas was awarded the Medal of Merit for his contributions to this project by President Harry S. Truman in 1946.
He continued his career at Monsanto, serving as a director, vice president, and president in 1942 and eventually as chairman until his retirement in 1970. During this time, Monsanto's annual sales grew from $34 million to $1.9 billion, and research expenses increased from $6.2 million to $101.4 million.
The painting weaves together parts of Monsanto's history as a manufacturer of controversial products, including the pesticides DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, recombinant, and bovine growth hormone. The smoking figure lying in the foreground of the slide is based on a social media video of a Palestinian victim hit by white phosphorus bombs. Watching the scene from below is a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Lama, with the face of a Palestinian sunbird. She is one of the people who have spoken to me via social media from Gaza, and dreams of becoming a surgeon. Only three companies in the world manufacture white phosphorus munitions: Pine Bluff Arsenal, Monsanto (Bayer), and Israel Chemical Company. Using white phosphorus munitions as a weapon against humans is a violation of international law. Two of the companies are American, and one is Israeli. Looming from behind are the deformed faces of children from Hiroshima and Vietnam.
2025
Sumi ink, Gouache, and color pencil on paper
22 5/8 x 30 1/8 in (57.5 x 76.5 cm)
The central image depicts the plutonium core and encasing block developed during the Manhattan Project, along with the face of American chemist and industrial leader Charles Allen Thomas (1900-1982). His ears are attached to the side.
In 1943, Thomas was tasked with developing a method to isolate polonium, the rare element selected as the detonator for the plutonium bomb (Dayton Project). This detonator was code-named "urchin."
Thomas commissioned Monsanto to develop technology to refine polonium industrially and combine it with beryllium to create the "urchin" detonator. Thomas conducted this research in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and the polonium produced there was shipped to Los Alamos and assembled into the detonators for the Gadget and Fat Man bombs. Thomas was one of many scientists who witnessed the culmination of this research with the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945. Thomas was awarded the Medal of Merit for his contributions to this project by President Harry S. Truman in 1946.
He continued his career at Monsanto, serving as a director, vice president, and president in 1942 and eventually as chairman until his retirement in 1970. During this time, Monsanto's annual sales grew from $34 million to $1.9 billion, and research expenses increased from $6.2 million to $101.4 million.
The painting weaves together parts of Monsanto's history as a manufacturer of controversial products, including the pesticides DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, recombinant, and bovine growth hormone. The smoking figure lying in the foreground of the slide is based on a social media video of a Palestinian victim hit by white phosphorus bombs. Watching the scene from below is a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Lama, with the face of a Palestinian sunbird. She is one of the people who have spoken to me via social media from Gaza, and dreams of becoming a surgeon. Only three companies in the world manufacture white phosphorus munitions: Pine Bluff Arsenal, Monsanto (Bayer), and Israel Chemical Company. Using white phosphorus munitions as a weapon against humans is a violation of international law. Two of the companies are American, and one is Israeli. Looming from behind are the deformed faces of children from Hiroshima and Vietnam.
Holiday, 2024
Sumi ink on paper 14x11" |
Four Eyes, 2025
Sumi ink on paper 14x11" |
WP, 2025
Sumi ink on paper 14x11" |
731, 2025
Sumi ink on paper 14x11" |
Onijtaiji Series
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Click here to read the detailed explanation of each piece.
Memory Bug Series
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Click here to read the detailed explanation of each piece.
© 2015 Gaku Tsutaja