Fiona Tan: Ascent

Mt. Fuji is the focus of renowned international visual artist Fiona Tan's (b. 1966) latest installation and site-specific work, Ascent, presented at the Izu Photo Museum, Japan (2016). The project is comprised of two visual partsa 77-minute video installation and an extensive photographic installation of over 4,000 images either contributed by the public or selected from the archives of the Izu Photo Museum. The project is at once a rumination on the singularity of the mountain, man's relationship to it, an exploration of history told through visual culture, and a study of the history of film. Conceived almost as an artist's book project, the published record of the exhibition is divided into three small softcover catalogs housed in an elegant cardboard slipcase. The first book, filled with 100 color and black-and-white images, features both video outtakes and a fascinating selection of historical and contemporary images of Mt. Fuji. The two remaining books feature contributions by noted writer and curator David Campany, art historian Toshiharu Ito and cultural anthropologist Shinichi Takemura and Fiona Tan's script for Ascent.