Engineering that Shapes the Landscape. The Work of Iwasaki Takahiro in the Japanese Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale

Abstract

The aim of this research is to study the work of the Japanese artist Iwasaki Takahiro, through an analysis of his participation in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. The author reveals in his works a very personal interiorization of the landscape. Born in Hiroshima, he incorporates in these projects the perspectives of a city whose present existence emerged from the radioactive ashes. His works show how Japanese culture has developed ways of acting to facilitate coexistence with the most aggressive phenomena of nature, such as typhoons, earthquakes, along with human extraction of its materials and energies. The main objective was to analyze the way in which Iwasaki’s work updates and draws on traditional cultural perspectives, attempting to integrate the perspective of the times and his engineering works in the landscape. Methodologically, we have used a phenomenological analysis adapted to the study of the artistic phenomenon in which, following authors such as Juan O. Cofré-Lagos, I move from the ontic stratum of the artistic object to its phenomenological stratum, using the appropriate contextualization at all times.