Tokyo Photographic Art Museum has shared an exhibition-related reflection headed ‘Shingo Francis’ that describes the social attentiveness of Francis’s mother and her use of artistic expression to confront real emotional pain.
The statement portrays her as a careful observer of society who empathised with people who became victims of its absurdities. It says she neither looked away from the pain involved nor offered easy forgiveness.
Instead, the reflection says, she faced that pain directly through artistic expression. The account does not elaborate on particular works or the exhibition itself, but it gives a precise account of the outlook attributed to her: attention to social conditions and to the emotional consequences borne by those caught within them.
Her artistic expression, the statement adds, continued to ask both individuals and society whether things were acceptable as they were.
