Sugimoto’s Sonezaki Shinjū: Onstage and Backstage

In conjunction with the fall gallery exhibition Bunraku Backstage (October 4, 2024—January 19, 2025), the contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto will discuss his innovative reimagining of the 18th century classic play Sonezaki Shinjū (“The Love Suicides at Sonezaki”). His production deployed striking adjustments: faster puppeteering, a dramatically illuminated stage, and an animated video backdrop by the artist Tabaimo. Alongside clips from the 2012 NHK recording Hiroshi Sugimoto meets Bunraku: Love Suicide Sonezaki, Sugimoto will provide insight into the onstage and backstage workings of his novel approach. This will also be a special opportunity to see Sugimoto perform his Ohatsu puppet as she makes a cameo appearance.

Speaker
Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. He graduated from Saint Paul’s University, Tokyo, in 1970 and from the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, in 1974. He moved to New York the same year.  He currently splits his time between Tokyo and New York. Sugimoto’s signature practice spans the mediums of photography, performing arts, sculpture, installation, and architecture. His art deals with history and temporal existence through a variety of subject matters. He explores issues surrounding time, empiricism, and metaphysics that bridge Eastern and Western ideologies while examining the nature of perception and the origins of consciousness.

In 2008, Sugimoto founded the New Material Research Laboratory, an architectural design office. In 2009, he founded the Odawara Art Foundation to advance traditional Japanese and international contemporary performing arts and convey the essence of Japanese culture to a broader audience. In 2017, the Foundation opened the Enoura Observatory. Sugimoto’s photographs are in the collections of prominent museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Gallery, London; and many more. 

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Image © Odawara Art Foundation.

Bunraku Backstage is generously supported by Takenaka Corporation.

Product support for Bunraku Backstage is generously provided by Sony Corporation of America.

Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Exhibitions and Arts & Culture Lecture Programs are made possible, in part, by Sompo Holdings, Inc.; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund; the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; Peggy and Dick Danziger; Jun Makihara and Megumi Oka; Barbara Bertozzi Castelli; and Gallery Circle members. Support for Arts & Culture Lecture Programs is provided, in part, by the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.

Transportation assistance is provided by Japan Airlines, the official Japanese airline sponsor for Japan Society gallery exhibitions.