Cristea Zhao Nian - Searching for terauchi #1

2019, Inkjet prints developed from ground St John's-wort and watercolour on 35mm film negatives, 100 x 62 cm.

Osamu Dazai is one of the most significant Japanese novelist of the 20th century. ‘Sorry for being born’ (生れて、すみません), the subtitle of his autobiographical novel A Standard-bearer of the Twentieth Century, is considered as his most well-known life statement. In fact, this line was plagiarized from Terauchi, an obscure poet struggling with life. It is being said that when Terauchi found out, he cried out ‘As if my life has been stolen. I’m destroyed… I’m destroyed…’ He later disappeared, and nobody ever saw him again. The date of his death remains unknown.

It was also revealed that Osamu Dazai’s lover Shizuko Ota contributed her personal diary to him as materials for his novel The Setting Sun. This complex and unbalanced dynamic is further exposed here: ‘Consecrating my diary to a demon is an absolute pleasure’, Ota told their daughter Haruko afterwards. Reconsidering power and hierarchy, ‘Searching for Terauchi’ is an acknowledge to the unknown; more importantly, a tribute to Terauchi, to Shizuko Ota, and many other nameless wandering around the world.

Artist: Cristea Zhao Nian

Cristea Zhao Nian works with live performance, video installation and text-based work that centre around the themes of loss, trauma and melancholia. Language, spoken narrative and shared-listening are crucial in her works. She unearths narratives from personal history as well as collective memory to investigate various forms of loss, both material and conceptual.