In January 1927, missionary Dr. Sidney Gulick initiated a plan to sow the seeds of peace between the children of America and Japan. Hoping to foster mutual understanding between the two nations in a time of diplomatic tension, he asked his countrymen to send dolls to the Hina Matsuri, an ancient old Doll Festival in which Japanese families display handcrafted dolls and pray for the wellbeing of their daughters.
About 2.7 million Americans heeded Dr. Gulick’s call, donating 12,739 dolls accompanied by letters of friendship. The dolls reached Japan in time for the March festival, where they were greeted with delight by children and communities across the country. To honour this gesture, Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa, a Japanese statesman, appealed to his compatriots to send Japanese dolls to America. About 2.6 million Japanese raised funds to make 58 specially-commissioned dolls 32-inches tall, each wearing a unique, exquisite kimono. The dolls arrived in America just before Christmas that year, and toured the nation as symbols of peace between the two great powers.
These expressions of mutual goodwill were sadly undermined during the Second World War. In both countries, the dolls were regarded as icons of the enemy and most were destroyed or discarded. Today, the Friendship Doll Programme is a mere footnote in the annals of international relations. Few in Singapore would have heard of it if not for Donna Ong, an artist who scoured both history and her imagination to create an installation entitled The Caretaker for 8Q sam’s inaugural exhibition, 8Q-Rate.
Occupying a former classroom in the building that once housed the Catholic High School, The Caretaker welcomes visitors to a small desk that appears to be a workstation. Loose sets of keys on a little cubicled shelf, old magazines, a clock and a mug share their space with a close-circuit monitor and assorted trinkets that look as if they had been picked up by the unseen caretaker during his rounds. A few steps behind the desk is a semi-enclosed space surrounded by cupboards. There are neat stacks of boxes adorned with labels and faded photographs of life-like dolls. Scattered TV monitors replay footage of small, pale figurines to a steady ticking that unsettles as much as the dark silence that looms over the rest of the room. And a hidden camera broadcasts the blurry visage of those within for the nameless custodian.
In responding to 8Q-Rate’s theme of “School”, Ong has built an artwork that resonates on multiple levels. Ong terms her creation as an attempt to elicit the poignancy that arises from knowing how an “immense amount of effort lavished is expended in vain”. But the dolls in The Caretaker, which appear only in moving pictures and our own memories, also evoke other emotions both innocent and sinister. Some would see in them a shadow of long lost school playgrounds. Others might feel a tinge of claustrophobic uneasiness, as they ponder the coffin-like boxes and bright-eyed stares of dolls that summon the uncanny spirits of horror films and voodoo rituals.
8Q-Rate, which features Ong and seven other Singaporean contemporary artists in site-specific installations at the former Catholic High School at Queen Street, runs till 9 January 2009.
i believe the place housed Catholic Primary School not Catholic High School...? CHS only half shared the premise... i think
Posted by: monkey | 27 September 2008 at 07:41 AM