shashasha

A theater of flux and interconnected energy

Ryu Ika, Grand Prix winner of the 21st 1_WALL photography competition in 2019, presents an energetic, almost comic book-like experience with her publication “The Second Seeing.” With each new page, we engage with a variety of characters and subjects with a mixture of humor and discomfort. Beautiful moments alternate with unpleasant yet unforgettable sights, and elements of decay – bodies, membranes, fluids, sweat, blood, dead animals – come into contact with the vividness of the world.

Ika, originally from Inner Mongolia, binds together fragments of reality not necessarily with the aim of forming a larger picture but driven by the urge of turning photographs into works of arts through her own consciousness and experiences.

“Completely transparent photographs are an impossibility. People live in a world of their own preconceptions. That might sound like an often used cliché. However, Ryu Ika stakes out her resistance to an increasingly fake world, approaching photography in a way that allows her to thoroughly digest the 'self' manipulating the photos.”
— from the text "Myself as Resistance - Ryu Ika's The second seeing" by Riku Iioka (Curatorial Assistant, Mori Art Museum) (text not included in this publication)