Flos Pavonis by Aya Momose

A Piano Played By Ear

Curated by Paola Paleari

November 1 – 29

Aya Momose

Flos Pavonis, 2021

4K video and sound, single screen, subtitled, 30:11 min

In January 2021, a law implementing a near-total ban on abortion was enacted in Poland amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. At least three women have died since as a result of being denied a therapeutic pregnancy termination.
At the same time, gender inequality is a stubbornly entrenched problem in Japan. It ranked 120 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index Report 2021, which measures the gap between men and women in political representation, economic empowerment, education and health. This puts Japan at the bottom of the ladder among the developed world.

In Flos Pavonis, Aya Momose follows the film correspondence format, traditionally used in Japanese diary films, to unfold an exchange between two fictive characters: Japanese Aya and Natalia, a female activist living in Poland. The women use the plant Flos Pavonis – the “peacock flower” once employed as an herbal abortifacient by enslaved Africans brought to the colonial Caribbean – as a clue to their reflections on sex, intimacy, identity and freedom.
Moving back and forth between visual and oral communication, which sometimes take the form of introspective soliloquies, the film highlights to which extent the female body is still tossed about by the authoritarian power. To counteract this, the two young women draw on technology and imagination to regain control over their fates and choose to cultivate care and connection as a concrete act of protest.

CREDITS

Director and Writer: Aya Momose
Cast: Aya Momose, Reiji Saito, Naoyuki Sakai
Pole Dancer: Yamadori
Voice: Aya Momose, Ada Piekarska
Cinematographer: Takashi Fujikawa
Editor: Aya Momose, Takashi Fujikawa
Sound Operator: Tao Koyanagi
Sound Designer: Ichiro Fujimoto
3DCG Designer: Daisuke Fujita
Prop Designer: Takeru Odaki
Costume Designer: Rie Usui
English Translator: William Andrews
Lyric Translator into Japanese: Hikaru Nozawa
Special Thanks to: Department of Musical Creativity and the Environment, Tokyo University of the Arts; Pole & Fitness Studio Lycoris; Saori Azuma; Miwa Negoro; Shingo Kanagawa; Piotr Bujak
Production supporting: Post Covid-19 Arts Fund Executive Committee

Aya Momose (b. 1988, Tokyo) completed her MFA in Oil Painting at Musashino Art University in 2013. By employing a self-referential methodology that reconsiders the structure of video through video itself, Momose’s work deals with the multi-layered complexity of communication with the other. In recent years, her practice has focused on the issue of bodies depicted in motion pictures while delving more deeply into questions of sexuality and gender. Solo exhibitions include “Momose Aya: Interpreter,” Towada Art center, Aomori (2022); “I.C.A.N.S.E.E.Y.O.U,” EFAG EastFactoryArtGallery, Tokyo (2020); and “Voice Samples,” Yokohama Museum of Art Art Gallery 1 (2014). Selected group shows include “Aichi Triennale 2022,” Aichi Arts Center, (2022); “Listen to Her Song,” University Art Museum Tokyo University of the Arts (2020); “Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice,” Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2016); and “Artist File 2015 Next Doors: Contemporary Artists in Japan and Korea,” National Art Center, Tokyo and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Gwacheon (2015-16). She has been active both domestically and abroad in recent years; she completed a residency in New York as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow, and the documentary “Exchange Diary”, which she co-produced with Im Hung-soon, received an official invitation to the Jeonju International Film Festival. Major collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, and Yokohama Museum of Art.

Paola Paleari (b. 1984) is an Italian independent writer, editor and curator based in Copenhagen. She co-curated the Contemporary Art Program 2021-2022 at Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon and has directed the exhibition platform JIR SANDEL since 2018. She writes extensively about contemporary art and between 2013 and 2018 she covered the position of Deputy Editor at YET magazine. Her main area of interest is the photographic language and its relations with contemporary visual culture and art practices. She is also interested in the intersection between critical and creative writing and often intertwines art criticism with other forms of storytelling.

Aya Momose, Flos Pavonis, 2021, 4K video and sound, single screen, subtitled, 30:11 min