Re-enactment as Conversation: Yoshiko Shimada’s Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman

McKenzie, V. and Webb, J. (2023). Re-enactment as Conversation: Yoshiko Shimada’s Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman. In Frederick, U.K., Harrison, A., Ireland, T., & Magee, J. M. (eds.), Difficult Conversations. British Council.

Yoshiko Shimada is a contemporary artist immersed in difficult conversations. Much of her work gazes squarely at Japan’s participation in World War II and historical war crimes, and at her own imbrication in her culture. She was one of the first Japanese artists to enter conversation and collaboration with Korean survivors on the rights and recognition of the so-called ‘comfort women’. In 2011, activists in Seoul erected the Statue of Peace, which depicts a girl or very young woman in traditional Korean dress, seated beside an empty chair. Similar statues have now been erected in other cities around the world. In Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman (2012 –), Shimada sits silently next to the titular statue. Shimada’s re-enactments of the simple gesture – sitting silently alone or next to another woman – powerfully communicate resistance to the erasure of difficult truths. Documentation of these performances extend the work’s reach and invite other women to participate, adopting the pose themselves, and sharing that through images.

Image: Tomorrow Girls Troop, Against Forgetting, and Yoshiko Shimada, Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman, 2018. Photograph by Sit Weng San.