Candlestick Man, 2023

Performance, gofun, candlesticks, hand-dipped candles made of beeswax and oil infused with lichen collected on the island of Tanegashima, Japan

In 1543, a ship washed up on the island of Tanegashima. Two Portuguese men were aboard: the first Europeans to arrive in Japan. What followed was a period when western merchants and missionaries gained a foothold in the country, and Japanese artists and artisans created various objects that responded to these foreigners.

Candlestick Man looks at their depictions of those first Europeans, using two candlesticks in the style of Oribe ware (one made by Jiro Sasaki). Placed on long custom-made pedestals at TOKAS Hongo, Tokyo, each holds a candle made of beeswax and oil infused with lichens I sourced on Tanegashima.

This project began in a moment of misrecognition, as the monument to the arrival of the Portuguese on Tanegashima looks like it has smallpox. As historian Brett L. Walker has observed, the introduction of the disease to the Americas proved instrumental to the conquistadors’ ambitions. But when the Portuguese reached Japan in the very same century, the disease was already endemic, thus helping the country limit access when and how it saw fit.

When one considers these power relations, the candlestick men become fascinating objects. The European is shrunk and made to hold candles for hours on end. A colonial and imperial project is reduced to a domestic thing.

These ideas arose in a moment of misrecognition. I happened to see the monument as diseased. In reality, it’s covered with lichens. Life is growing on this stone.

Japanese art has a tradition of depicting lichens, as in this folding screen by Rinpa artist Sakai Hōitsu. The white dots are gofun, a pigment made of crushed shells.

Historically, gofun was painted on folding screens and sliding doors: art and architecture were one and the same. I wanted to honor this in my installation, so I’ve dotted the walls with gofun—reproducing the distribution of lichen in this sixteenth-century folding screen of the Portuguese arriving at the port of Nagasaki.

Spoken performances in English and Japanese (by me and Naganuma Wataru, respectively) unfold the histories and facets of the installation. Towards their conclusions, we reveal that the candles contain oil infused with Tanegahima lichens. This infusion doesn’t have a smell, much like smallpox and coronavirus, so it spreads without warning.

As these candles burn, they open a portal to a remote place on Tanegashima, to the history of that site, and to what could have but didn’t happen. Taken as a whole, Candlestick Man is a modest attempt to create a sensual relationship to the past.


Further Reading: Candlestick Man, E-Flux Notes