Hauser & Wirth Features Alumnus Naotaka Hiro in A Modest Proposal

‘Sixteen Terminals’ by Naotaka Hiro 2016, Bronze | Photo by Genevieve Hanson, Courtesy: Hauser & Wirth

Alumnus Naotaka Hiro (Film/Video MFA 00) is among the featured artists in the group exhibition, A Modest Proposal, currently showing at Hauser & Wirth New York, 18^th Street. The exhibition opened on June 23 and runs through July 29.

A Modest Proposal takes its name from Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satirical essay of the same name. A commentary on the extreme poverty and famine in Ireland, Swift proposes that the solution to starvation is to eat children. With Swift’s tone in mind, the art exhibit seeks to critique people’s relationship to the bodily and abject in a humorous way.

The artist, who was born in Osaka, Japan, and is now based in Los Angeles, created the sculpture “Sixteen Terminals” for the exhibition. The piece was created by implementing a long and challenging process that involved self-casting his own body and reworking it over and over to create a sculpture from it. On the Hauser & Wirth website, Hiro describes this piece as “me versus me.”

The other artists featured in A Modest Proposal are: Lucas Blalock, Sanya Kantarovsky, Nicola L., Tala Madani and Jakub Julian Ziolkowski.