Takashi Horisaki

#InstaBonsai (Series 1), 2016~2020
Ceramics, dirt, cacti, Instagram photos, printed photos, polaroid, drawings, etc.
Various installation sizes, ceramic pieces are from 2″ to 18″ in height

Initially inspired by the variety of forms that “bonsai” took under the hashtag #bonsai on Instagram, #InstaBonsai is a series of ceramic cactus planters, sculptures, photographs, Instagram posts, postacards and more that consider the circulation of images and culture in the age of social media. Bonsai as a form were initially codified in the late Edo period, just in time for them to be featured as a “traditional” cultural product in nineteenth century Japanese pavilions at the earliest Worlds Fairs in which Japan participated, so their forms and presentation are intimately tied to cultural politics and colonial trade. In the age of social media, the rapid dissemination and circulation of images across various geographies accelerates the speed of adaptation and redefinition, much as the trade pressures of early capitalism and industrialization created the cultures of indoor plants and Worlds Expositions that led to the identification of bonsai culture, originally adapted from Chinese ideas on gardening, with Japan. How do the pressures of social media in late stage capitalism reshape our ideas of traditions and cultural appropriation/adaptation? And how does the material difference between different physical media—Instagram images, printed photographs, ceramic sculptures, emails, physical postcards, etc—further inflect the new iterations that emerge? What is material culture and what does it mean in the age of the electronic image?

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