I’m So Happy You Are Here – Japan’s monumental female gaze, now in The Netherlands

We all love Japanese women’s imprint in the visual arts – even when we don’t realise this is what we are looking at. For centuries now, a truth we often choose to obscure is that most of our favourite artists and creatives have been informed by Japanese praxis and claimed it as their own (a deeper Google dive into Van Gogh or Aronofsky would reveal more than we’d maybe like to admit). Despite some prominent Japanese male figures establishing themselves in the global cannon on their own forces, so much of East Asia’s patrimony, and especially work by women, remain either completely undiscovered or appropriated with a sheer lack of crediting.

I’m so happy you’re here delves deeper into this subsumed world, redeeming it from an unfair oblivion. As a curatorial vanguard, the exhibition sets forward a previously undealt with perspective of female photographic talent in Japan. This, of course, does not simply come with a feminine name tagged to their art – its viewers transcend into a dreamy, vivid scape of a world interpreted through some seriously singular pairs of eyes. Carrying us on a dazzling chronology from the 50s until back in the present, I’m so happy you’re here showcases over 25 artists, including Kawauchi Rinko, Ishiuchi Miyako and Katayama Mari. Their independence of time-bound trends and ceaseless drive for experimentation are the red thread converging their spirit into a sapid assemblage – and Fotomuseum in The Hague convened it best. While there’s no doubt of the photographic collection’s lure, it keeps us lingering on the frontiers of their hidden world’s mystique; and in all honesty, we would not want it any other way.

Make sure to enter their realm before May 5th – more information and tickets are available here.