CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Simon Fujiwara inaugurates the new exhibition program at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts—dedicated to the synthesis of art, design, and education—with a presentation of three works reconfigured especially for the galleries. The exhibition is organized by James Voorhies, the recently appointed John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director. It is the first solo exhibition by Fujiwara at an arts institution in the United States.

“The rigor and attention Simon Fujiwara applies to his beautifully complex and engaging films and installations are ideal for initiating the new programming at the Carpenter Center,” says Voorhies. “I’m thrilled we have the opportunity to present his work within the contexts of an academic institution, the Harvard Film Archive, and Le Corbusier’s building.”

The exhibition will feature three immersive installations by Fujiwara. In Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex), the artist restages elements remembered from a childhood photograph, now lost. In the photograph, his bikini-clad British mother was held aloft in the arms of a Lebanese boyfriend on a Beirut beach by the Casino du Liban, where she performed as a cabaret dancer. The installation at the Carpenter Center will include the physical evidence of an attempt to recast the lost photograph, including stage lights, office desk, photographs, and sand creating a kind of hybrid site of photographer’s studio, casting room, and beach. In the 20-minute video component, fact and fiction stunningly combine into an enthralling process of reconstructing the photograph from personal memory, which leads to inquiries on the relationship between the West and the Middle East, touching on racial profiling, exoticism, and terrorism.

Rehearsal for a Reunion (with the father of pottery) is a video and installation that explores the psychology of a father-son relationship. The work is based on the artist’s trip to Japan to reconnect with his estranged Japanese father through the collective act of making a tea set in a pottery workshop. The tea set they made together is a replica of one by famed British studio potter Bernard Leach, who worked in Japan before returning to the United Kingdom to establish a studio in St Ives, the very town where Fujiwara grew up. The installation at the Carpenter Center will feature artifacts from this experience and a video. In the video, the artist performs a script that explains the reunion to the actor who plays his father but without coming to a definitive end, overall raising questions about authenticity, identity, and our innate desire for some form of conclusion.

The installation Letters from Mexico, inspired by the 16th-century Letters from Mexico by conquistador Hernán Cortés, features objects and texts that chronicle Fujiwara’s experiences during a visit to Mexico, which coincided with dual celebrations of the 200th anniversary of its independence from Spain and 100th anniversary of its revolution. Fujiwara’s letters, addressed to “Europe,” were translated phonetically and transcribed by street typists in Mexico City’s Plaza Santo Domingo. This communication process alludes to the relationship between Europe and Mexico, to what is lost in translation as vestiges of colonialism linger in other socioeconomic forms. In the manner of an anthropological museum, Letters from Mexico presents Fujiwara’s framed letters alongside travel memorabilia and other objects. In the gallery, red, green, and white curtains form a theatrical backdrop for the letters, evoking Mexico’s nationalism through the colors of the flag while ultimately problematizing the notion of independence under the current sociopolitical conditions of global capitalism and tourism.

Born in 1982 in London and currently based in Berlin, Simon Fujiwara has shaped a complex and rich practice that interweaves performance, film, sculpture, and text into highly immersive environmental installations. Bringing personal experiences (both real and imagined) into contact with broader historical, social, and political topics, his expansive practice has been described as an “autobiographical journey through the architecture of modern life—constantly rebuilt as it is retold.” His exhibitions and projects function as theatrical frameworks where players—family members, real-life friends, historical figures—and events cohabit and interact, generating situations where the real and the imagined are not easily discernable. Often appearing himself or shifting into various guises within his works, Fujiwara’s narratives destabilize, reperform, and thus reconstitute notions of truth, authenticity, morality, and the credibility of the artist as narrator, leveraging new perspectives on issues such as sexuality, globalism, and race.