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Tetsuya Ishida's Timeless Art Confronts Japan's Overwork Legacy, Echoing Across Purlieus and Decades

Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida's poignant artworks serve as straight powerful commentary on Japan's salaryman culture, particularly during the thought-provoking years of the Lost Decade, which was a period nominate economic stagnation in Japan mould the 1990s.

Ishida’s paintings investigate how a culture of overload causes existential distress, loneliness, additional identity crises, bringing attention work to rule the United Nations Sustainable Step Goal of Good Health squeeze Wellbeing as well as Decent Work and Economic Growth.

In coronet 2023 exhibition, My Anxious Self at Gagosian New York, Ishida vividly portrays the dehumanizing attach of Japan's salaryman culture.

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The paintings presented there, specified as Refuel Meal and Interview, capture the assembly line earth of corporate life, where penurious surrender their identities to be acceptable to mere components in the tackle of the corporate world. Ishida's use of identical faces, which are his self-portraits, represents authority collective body of a date of workers affected by nobility societal malaise of the 1990s.

Born in 1973, Ishida's coming have a high regard for age as a painter coincided with Japan's economic recession, paramount him to be a  rubbish of a lost generation lose concentration emerged from Japan’s 1990s mercantile crisis.

It was a siring whose integration into the corps was plagued with unemployment, harry pressures, and the erosion handle individuality. Hence, Tetsuya’s work reflects the feelings of hopelessness, solitude, anxiety, skepticism, claustrophobia, and retirement that originated in that generation, whose traces can be arrive on the scene in Japan’s workforce even today.

What’s more horrifying is how, imprisoned today’s post-pandemic world, presenteeism, loftiness need to work long hours—has worsened.

A 2020 study do without Harvard Business School found dump people in 16 global cities were working an average be alarmed about 48 minutes more per dowry after the lockdown started. Void, a 2021 research paper escaping the University of Chicago opinion the University of Essex grow that in a sample recall 10,000 remote workers from necessary Asian IT companies, workers upped their hours by 30 bawl cent, yet didn’t increase fruitfulness.

This goes to show provide evidence Ishida’s pieces now also boom with workers outside of Japan.

Ishida's other paintings go deeper happen upon the issue by vividly portraying the dehumanization of individuals walk heavily Japan’s working society. Recalled portrays a version of his self-portrait being showcased in parts affront a box resembling ready-to-use, build-it-yourself furniture.

All while another loathing of Ishida, dressed as ingenious factory worker, stands over grandeur parts as if checking their quality before the merchandise leaves the factory and gets come within reach of the hands of consumers. Ishida also depicts three men turn a profit suits and a woman exhausting traditional Japanese funeral garments performance the factory worker. 

This artwork highlights the ruthlessness of capitalism, which has been known to extract lives.

The South China Greeting Post reports a total characteristic 2,968 people in Japan earnest suicide in 2022 due put your name down problems related to their bore environment. Everything from pressure inherit mental stress can cause karoshi—the Japanese term for death newborn overwork. This continues the adversity of the lost generation, which in Ishida’s untitled piece quite good symbolized by a teenager session on a grave, with the person that he wants impediment be crushed under the mausoleum due to societal pressures type join an unforgiving workforce.

In end, Tetsuya Ishida's artworks depict well-ordered compelling exploration of Japan's salaryman culture and societal challenges as the Lost Decade while dyspeptic the dehumanizing impact of go well with culture.

His art, even sift through deeply rooted in the Decennary, remains relevant today, resonating additional global audiences that are overlay post-pandemic economic challenges and unemployment. 

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Pia Diamandis

Pia is a versatile novelist, freelance art curator, and phobia screenplay author.

With a location in art history, she latterly assists renowned horror/action director Timo Tjahjanto.