Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

size advertisement for sexual services often found pasted in telephone booths around the entertainment areas. During the exh ibition , a pink (a colour in Japan associated with sex) telephone is instal led in the gal lery. The number of the telephone was pri nted on 30,000 giveaway pocket-sized tissue packs distributed by the artist herself and the number was printed in a number of magazines. Female viewers in the gallery answered telephone cal ls from men who rang the number and thus were engaged in delicate conversations with unknown men . The artist directs sarcasm towards the other aspect of our society which is filled with pleasure, money and information . Hitomi Utami The artist has created installations with a theme of family and the family name adopted by wives. This work is a house-like object supporting a series of small houses upon which names of politicians' wives are placed . It questions why the wives of Japanese politicians often refer to themselves as being the wife of a specific public figure and why their own first name is never commonly used . This a project at Meiho village in wh ich the names of many local families were written upon house-like objects. In Japan, the family name has been trad itionally kept for the male surname and thus the family tree was developed only along the male side . Si nce the 1 970s, there has been a rapid increase in the nuclear family units and also women's social emergence ; the use of differing surnames for husbands and wives is now coming into focus. Many women feel that it is inconvenient to change their su rnames after marriage from a professional point of view, but moreover, they do not want to change their surnames because they feel that their personal identity will become lost . This Spring, a Bill was schedu led to be submitted to the Japanese government for officially recognising the use of differing names withi n a family, but this Bill was cancelled prior to submission. The main reason being , that if you allow such a use of differing names then this may well lead to a breakdown of family values. There sti l l remains many more challenges and issues for gender equality to be achieved . As we have just seen , there is qu ite a d iversity of expression among Japanese women artists. These artists were not particularly part of the Japanese femi nist movement. Perhaps they may be in the same position of the post-feminism movement in the West, where arguments are less harsh . After all, women cannot become men , therefore we must acknowledge the diffe rence that is unique to the female and utilise this difference to best advantage . 1 1 7