‘What is this narrow passage?’ (After “In the Realm of the Senses”)

Kate Howe, 2022, installation, kraft paper, plushie textile, black cling film, oil paint, electric lights, LaDyptique Tuberuse candle, wicker stool, Murano glass ashtray c. 1971, RuptureXIBIT.

‘What is this narrow passage?’ Is a quote from erotic Japanese film ‘In the Realm of the Senses' (1976). Based on a true story in Tokyo 1936, considered to be the most erotic film ever made, it is still banned in Japan. "Erotic, not explicit; erotic having to do with becoming more than you are and escaping the norms of yourself. Breaking a taboo is an erotic act because it stretches a concept of what we are capable of being." clarifies Howe.

To enter the work, viewers pass through a purple curtain mirroring Sada Abe's kimono in the film. Beyond the purple curtain, installed in a shed partially open to the elements, the room is completely wrapped in Kraft paper. As the wind blows, the paper moves, a gentle crinkling sound is heard, and the room breathes. The scent of luxurious French tuberuse diffuses through the space. Inside this room, there is ambivalence: dungeon, retreat, womb, skin, sex toy, kidnapping site, playroom, interior, exterior, lush excess, and austerity all at once.

“The film was made in part as an artistic response to a political action happening during the time- the erotic as the political, power as erotic. I bound up that alien creature I was making, and it turned into a bondage toy, or a dead body. I propped it in the corner and I realized that part of erotics, of the pull of all of it is that place of ambivalence – and suddenly I felt it in that space both charged with intensity, but ambivalent in purpose. I didn't set out to make it, I was playing with everything in the studio that day, anything I could get my hands on was fair game. Afterward, some people wanted never to enter that room again, and some people I had to ask to leave.”

- Kate Howe.