“Body closure” marks a milestone as the first Japanese video art exhibition presented in Alicante, spotlighting two influential voices in Japan’s contemporary queer and feminist art scene: Mai Endo and Aya Momose. This project brings their visual experiments into a European context, inviting audiences to encounter a dialogue that crosses cultural and geographic boundaries while staying rooted in a shared search for meaning beyond conventional gender roles.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a conversation between the artists and curator Cayetano Limorte about the rigid heteronormative frameworks that still govern how gender difference is experienced and represented in both Eastern and Western societies. The show traces a careful arc from language as a tool of control over gendered expression to the way images participate in art history and the institutional legitimization of gender stereotypes. The curatorial approach treats moving images as a dynamic site where narrative, form, and sexuality intersect, challenging viewers to rethink how identities are formed and perceived within cultural power structures.
The display comprises five recent video works by Endo and Momose, offering a concentrated look at how these artists explore embodiment, desire, and social constraint through moving imagery. Endo presents “Resembling Snake 3: River” (2020) as a meditation on transformation and fluidity, pairing lyrical visuals with a sonic landscape that invites viewers to consider the body’s relationship to its surroundings. “La Toilette” (2017) continues Endo’s exploration of self-presentation and performance, using intimate space and ritual to probe how appearance communicates, disguises, and reveals. Momose contributes “Born to Die” (2020), a provocative meditation on mortality, vulnerability, and the cultural scripts surrounding fate, memory, and gendered experience. The inclusion of two co-created tracks, “Love Condition I” and “Love Condition II” (2020), expands the sound design as a companion that intensifies the viewing experience, creating an auditory through-line that connects the visual narratives. This collection, presented outside of Japan for the first time, offers an occasion for cross-cultural dialogue about bodies, desire, and the politics of image in a global art arena—an event that resonates with diverse audiences in North America who engage with queer and feminist art practices.