Chim↑Pom
An artist collective / Members Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada, Motomu Inaoka, and Toshinori Mizuno / In 2015, they opened their artist-run space "Garter" in Tokyo to curate and showcase work by many of their contemporaries
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Based in Tokyo, Japan
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2005
SUPER RAT - Scrap & Build (2017), SUPER RAT (2011)
Chim↑Pom reflect on technological utopias and mass catastrophes seeking ways to embrace the “real,” the irreversible, immunizing element in global change. Their SUPER RAT projects focus on a new breed of poison-immune rats proliferating explosively in urban areas. Chim↑Pom captured some of these Super Rats with a fishing net, had them taxidermized and painted yellow to resemble the popular Pokémon character Pikachu. The artists pay attention to the prospect of co-existence between people exposed to radioactive contamination and the enhanced rats. Rats and crows are symbols of a “scrap and build” post-Fukushima humanity recycled to perpetuate itself into eternity.
#superrats #diorama #utopias #catastrophes #pikachu #post-Fukushima
photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI
Rat sculpture,
43.5 × 35 × 35 cm
Stuffed rat captured in Shinjuku, demolished diorama of Kabukicho, concrete fragments
Rats such as the one presented here have been and are exterminated by people on a daily basis.
Courtesy of the artists and ANOMALY, Tokyo
SUPER RAT, 2011
Video, 3'14''
Courtesy of the artists and MUJIN-TO Production