Simon Kaner (Archaeologist/ Executive Director and Head of Centre for Archaeology and Heritage Sainsbury Institute)
Hiraku Suzuki has a long-held fascination with archaeology, an interest sparked and fostered, as in so many cases, through childhood encounters with material traces of an ancient past near to where he lived. How many people say to me: ‘when I was young I dreamed of being an archaeologist’ … the implication being that they eventually followed a more rational route to making a living than offered by a job often characterised by the three K’s: (in Japanese) kitsui, kiken, kitanai. For those who do continue to become adult archaeologists, however, these often ephemeral traces – pottery sherds, flakes of stone, fragments of bone – provide the evidence for no less a question than how we became human, and offer the chance of a lifetime pursuing some of the most fascinating conundrums we face. Human beings are the only creatures that strive to express who they are through material culture. The ideas embedded in this expression can also inspire great art, and it is this intersection between art and archaeology that Suzuki explores so tantalisingly in his work.
Faced with the humdrum remains of everyday life and death from antiquity, archaeologists have to call on all our powers of creativity, discipline, intellect, and persistence to create meaningful and coherence narratives about the past based on the evidence we have uncovered. We order and categorise our discoveries according to how they were made, using what materials and interpret them in terms of what they can tell us of the people who left them behind, and why. There is doubtless a beauty to this ordering, and if art can be thought of as intentional acts of creativity in pursuit of beauty, appealing to, and sometimes confronting, the senses, then perhaps we can speak of the art of archaeology. Suzuki’s work makes us look at forms familiar from the museum or excavation report through fresh eyes. What at first seems random squiggles resolve themselves into intriguing motifs, encouraging us to think how early artists explored the potential of line, shape, rhythm, and symmetry long before a vocabulary for such concepts had evolved. Moreover, fed by Suzuki’s own curiosity about the mysterious objects from the past he encountered when he was young, his artworks make us question our own perceptions: how do we know that we are looking at the representation of an arrowhead or dogu figurine? What are the essential elements required for the recognition of a tangled scraper?
The relationship between art and archaeology is complex and nuanced. In the UK many excavations have on-site artists, helping the diggers and the viewing public visualize how the remains that occupy their attention came to be. Some archaeologists exhibit considerable artistic talent themselves, and I am sure that Suzuki could have made an outstanding archaeologist himself, had he chosen to do so. Academic archaeology conferences regularly feature artistic interventions. Books and museum displays are greatly enhanced through interpretive illustrations – paralleling an emerging field in contemporary literature as practiced at my University, the University of East Anglia: creative non-fiction. What at first seems an oxymoron is in fact a new window on reality, another way of expressing the multiplicity of human experience. Suzuki’s artworks offer a fresh and challenging perspective on our story, drawing us in and encouraging us to be ever more curious about how we came to be.
November 2019
contribution to the catalogue “SILVER MARKER—Drawing as Excavating”
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