The creator of Who the Bær: «I created a cartoon character in order not to become one myself». In Milan, the exhibition Who is Who-Dimensional? at Gió Marconi
Welcome to the Hotel Munber and Letters from Mexico
Compared to the artistic movements of the twentieth century and the belligerent period we are currently living in, your research seems to find elements in common with Dadaism: loss of values, existential no-sense, human contradictions etc. Also in the light of the works Welcome to the Hotel Munber (dissidence to political systems mixed with the heritage of your family past) or Letters from Mexico (relationship with the object), how relevant do you think Dada can still be?
Dadaism for Simon Fujiwara
«Dada is a movement that embraces nonsense and I think it’s relevant today because we are moving into a nonsense world. Increasingly we are moving into a time of technological mediation, image fetishism and a complete marketing reality and that is the logic that underpins our world. In the lockdown time, I developed my cartoon character Who the Bær as a survival tool to weather this nonsense world.
They consume all of the images and dreams that our capitalist machine pumps out, and they reveal its nonsense. They are a clown and what’s more they seem to relish this hyper-capitalist world. I borrowed from Dada at this time, because Dadaism emerged in the early twentieth century in another age of grief and loss, like ours. It emerged as a nonsense way to make sense of something as massive as war.
Things looked so bleak during the lockdown and before that I felt I was backed into a corner, philosophically. One can fall into cynicism and despair at a time when everything seems to be collapsing, from banks and political systems to notions of identity to our environment. But Who the Bær saved me. Nonsense saved me».
Simon Fujiwara: art as a medium for self-knowledge
Art exposes an idea that is a proof of existence. Your practice often combines autobiographical and fictional components. Is art for you also a tool for self-therapy and re-invention, reshaping one’s self?
«Art is my way of trying to put language to a problem I am reckoning with, and so art is a tool for my life – it has a purpose. In the case of Who the Bær, it was my response to this fundamental question ‘Who am I? Who Should I be?’ but rather than answers, I only had more questions.
Who was my response to the absurdity of a world that forces us to constantly answer to and define ourselves where the self can apparently be rational, categorized, performed, packaged. I felt in danger of becoming a cartoon character and so I created a cartoon character in order not to become one myself.
I think Who the Bær is a radical proposition because they move through the world as a kind of protest – but not a protest that is saying ‘No’ to everything but one that says ‘yes’ to everything. Who is everything and nothing, and in this sense is a philosophical proposition disguised as a silly, lovable cartoon bear».
Simon Fujiwara: between video and painting
You use different mediums in the creation of your works. Thinking about Hello, Rehearsal for a Reunion (with the Father of Pottery) or Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex), what potential do you sense in video language?
«At the moment less for myself, because I spent so much time on the screen during the lockdown that I missed the haptic experience of seeing humans in physical space, and of seeing art in a room. I will make my way back to video, I’m sure, and I am working on animation at the moment, but it is not my primary interest. Painting is. I painted as a child and I returned to it a couple of years ago, when I had the time to really explore what kind of paintings I wanted to make.
I have always loved painting because, well, paintings just ‘Are’ or ‘Are not’ – do you know what I mean? You can’t hide and you can’t lie and language won’t help you. I’m also quite a good painter, which is surprising because I thought I was too intelligent to paint well. Dalí said you had to be a bit stupid to paint really well, except for Picasso and maybe Velasquez. I thought I might have ruined my painterly prowess by over educating myself, but it turns out, I didn’t. Anyway, you don’t have to be a good painter to make a good painting. You have to be fearless. That would be my ambition».
Living in a world of images: the future of Who the Bær
The public has become emotionally attached to Who the Bær. If this character – in the name of identity-free possibilism – is deprived of individuality, perhaps the only certain fact is their age. Who is now more than two years old: will they ever evolve in this quest or will the overdose of visual stimuli exacerbate again and again this identity metamorphism to which they are ‘condemned’?
«Who is like Buddhism, Who is a concept, a philosophy or a way of life. They can’t become old but they can appear in a cloak of old age, as we do. There is no linearity in the Whoniverse, as there are seemingly no rules, except that Who will only ever be an image. This ‘I’ll never be an authentic three dimensional being’ is the fairytale paradox that Who lives like Pinocchio that will never be a real boy or the little Mermaid that just wants to be ‘part of the world’ but has a fish tail instead of legs. I guess Who will live forever in the paintings, collaged in people’s homes and museums, in the children’s books, maybe in kids minds as they grow up. I don’t know, does Mickey Mouse age?»
Simon Fujiwara’s exhibition Who is Who-Dimensional? at Gió Marconi in Milan
Quotation, irony, color: how did the creation of a site-specific room for your current exhibition at Gió Marconi develop?
«I wanted to bathe the visitors in color. Whenever I make an installation, I want to be a good host to the visitors, I want people to feel joy and pleasure because I am inviting them into my space and I want them to feel safe and in good hands. I want them to find it beautiful and want to stay. I want the audience to find intelligence in the exhibitions, the works and in themselves.
Who the Bær is, on the one hand, dealing with difficult and complex issues so I want to make people want to engage with this, to go through that discomfort with me, because it is rewarding in some other way, be it haptically, sensorially or just funny. The color palette I use for Who the Bær exhibitions is all dusty, light pastel hues. I use a certain range of pastels that are casually known as the millennial palette because they are used a lot in products and advertising by online celebrities and influencers like Kylie Jenner.
This color palette was perfectly ‘Who’ because colors are complex and don’t quite have clear identities. The light pinks verge on purple, the blues have a drop of pink in them and so on. All of the colors seem to be hard to describe and on a spectrum, much like the identities we are moving towards, at least in terms of gender. The conceptual link to Who the Bær is obvious, but the effect in the exhibition spaces makes you feel as if you are in a dreamlike space, always moving and flowing from one space to the next».
Simon Fujiwara
British-Japanese artist, born in 1982 in London, living and working in Berlin. He has participated in numerous biennials and group exhibitions, including the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2021, the 16th Istanbul Biennale and the 53rd Venice Biennale.
