On Eye to Eye
So Yamada (Curator, Shiga Prefectural Museum of Art)

In Eye to Eye, children with a wide range of appearances—White, Asian, Black—appear one after another. Projected onto the screen, they stand silently and motionless, facing the viewer. At first, the viewer may feel uncertain, wondering, “Which country is this?” As one continues to watch in the same space, clues such as the children’s gym uniforms, the judo hall visible in the background, and fragments of spoken language gradually lead the viewer to realize that these children are foreigners living in Japan.

The children shown on screen attend Santana Gakuen (Colégio Santana), a Brazilian school located in Shiga Prefecture. The presence of children from diverse racial backgrounds in Eye to Eye reflects Brazil’s history as a multiethnic nation. Today, the school enrolls approximately eighty students, from preschool age to high school. This raises a further question: why does such a school exist in Shiga Prefecture?

As of 2022, Brazilians constitute the largest group among foreign residents in Shiga Prefecture. A revision to Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 1990 granted work eligibility to people of Japanese descent (up to the third generation) and their spouses. This change led to an increase in Brazilian migrants—often referred to as “newcomers”—in Shiga, many of whom settled in industrial areas centered around automobile-related factories. As families joined them, these migrant communities gradually became more firmly established.

In 1992, Nakata Kenko, a Japanese Brazilian who had been working as a teacher in Brazil (out of respect, I will refer to her here as “Ms. Kenko”), visited Japan during her vacation and stayed for approximately two years. Through a series of encounters, Ms. Kenko visited company housing where Brazilians who had come to Japan for employment were living, and she was deeply shocked by what she saw. While their parents were away at work, many children spent their days watching television, unable to attend school. What appeared before her were children excluded from formal education, from local communities, and ultimately from Japan’s national system itself.

The problems of non-attendance at school and social exclusion faced by foreign children in Japan remain unresolved even today. As migration continues to increase, these issues should be understood as among the most urgent human rights challenges confronting contemporary Japanese society.

After returning to Brazil and working to raise funds, Ms. Kenko came back to Japan five years later and founded Santana Gakuen in Aisho Town, Shiga Prefecture. Since then, the school has continued to accept children who, for various reasons, have been unable to connect with Japan’s formal education system. Thinking about Ms. Kenko fills me with emotion. Each time I meet her, her sun-like smile offers comfort, and her boundless energy instills courage.

Seen against this backdrop of hardship surrounding the children, Eye to Eye might appear to be a work driven by a strongly political intention. Indeed, it is a contemporary artwork that takes migration as its subject and undeniably carries a degree of social critique. In this sense, it would be impossible to evaluate the work as a mere video portrait detached from its social context.

And yet, when compared with other artworks that address political issues, Eye to Eye is striking in its lack of overt political strategies or provocative devices. The children appear and disappear on screen with almost no explanation.

Eye to Eye does not urge direct action in response to social problems, nor does it attempt to guide viewers toward concrete forms of support. Given its subject matter, one cannot say that it is entirely devoid of a journalistic dimension. However, Kim Insook’s approach is clearly distinct from reporting. She is undoubtedly aware of the realities at hand and hopes for their improvement, yet such positions never come to the forefront of the work itself.

The gaze of Kim Insook, standing behind the camera, is directed not toward “issues,” but toward the “people” who are present there. At the same time, she herself is also someone who receives gazes—those of approximately eighty foreign children.

As its title suggests, Eye to Eye foregrounds the act of mutual looking. The viewer encounters each child one by one. Here, the fact that these portraits are presented as moving images rather than photographs is crucial. Because they are videos, viewers can perceive subtle shifts in expression and gesture—moments of shyness, tension, or hesitation. These slight movements, possible only because the children are living bodies standing in time, invite the viewer to imagine the individual stories each child carries.

Children such as these are often perceived as part of a single group labeled “Brazilians in Japan.” Such categorization can be useful in certain contexts, particularly when considering how to address shared social challenges. Yet no one who appears in Eye to Eye can be said to be essentially defined by the category “Brazilian in Japan.” Still, we so often speak of them collectively: foreigners, unfortunate children, children in need of help. Whether motivated by malice or goodwill, categorization spreads like a fog, obscuring individuals. Through this work, I believe Kim Insook clears away that fog. This is why she insists on affirming each person as an individual.

I would like to suggest one further intention at work here. As viewers look at the children, they are simultaneously being looked at by them. This process is compelling in that it allows viewers to follow and bodily experience what it was like for Kim Insook herself to stand behind the camera facing eighty children. This spatial configuration, which realizes a reciprocity of gazes, may be the most challenging aspect of Eye to Eye, even if the work does not immediately present itself as overtly political. Confronted with the children’s gazes, viewers may feel unsettled, avert their eyes, or find themselves unable to look away. In this sense, their experience overlaps with the kinds of gazes the children of Santana Gakuen encounter in their everyday lives.

Finally, I would like to explain why I am writing about this work as someone personally involved. Since my time working at the Borderless Art Museum NO-MA, I have maintained relationships with both Kim Insook and Santana Gakuen. At one point, I began to imagine creating an encounter between the two and planned an exchange program.

At the time, the aim was simply to facilitate interaction between the children and the artist through workshops; producing an artwork was never anticipated. However, an opportunity arose in the form of a commission from the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, and Kim Insook went on to create this work.

From my first visit to Santana Gakuen to the exhibition of the work at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, events unfolded at a breathtaking pace—for me, and likely for Kim Insook as well. I served merely as a connector and did nothing particularly significant. Yet through a series of fortunate coincidences, I had the privilege of witnessing the birth of such a remarkable work. The time I spent with Kim Insook and the children of Santana Gakuen remains an unforgettable memory.

Through this process, I was occasionally able to stay close to Kim Insook during the production period. In those moments, I felt I glimpsed the core of her practice. Was it research? A carefully constructed concept? Or the design of the installation? All of these are undoubtedly important elements of her work. Yet from my perspective, what she valued most was something far simpler: becoming close. As long as one views the children of Santana Gakuen merely as a “category,” a gap remains that can never be bridged. Kim Insook crosses that gap without hesitation. She meets each child’s gaze and shares laughter with them. That, I believe, is the distinctive touch of Kim Insook as an artist—and Eye to Eye was born from that gesture.