Film, Photography and Sculpture: Meiro Koizumi
Battlelands was Meiro Koizumi’s first UK solo exhibition, presented at White Rainbow in Fitzrovia, London. Bringing together film, photography and sculpture, the exhibition explored power, memory, trauma and the lasting psychological effects of military conflict. Koizumi’s practice examines Japan’s political and military history, using constructed scenarios and performances to explore tensions between authority, individual experience and emotion.
At the centre of the exhibition was Battlelands (2018), developed over four years in collaboration with five US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Wearing body cameras, the veterans recount their experiences of conflict while recording their everyday surroundings. By combining personal testimony with ordinary domestic imagery, Koizumi reveals how traumatic memories continue to shape civilian life, challenging conventional representations of soldiers as figures of heroism and sacrifice.
Also presented was Sleeping Boy (2015), a sculpture inspired by Koizumi’s anxiety for his newborn son’s safety. Created through nightly tracings of his son’s head, hands and feet, the work transforms parental fear into a physical expression of protection and vulnerability. Together, the works connect the wider histories of war with intimate experiences of fear, memory and care, highlighting the often unseen psychological consequences of conflict.
Meiro Koizumi (b. 1976, Gunma, Japan) is a Japanese artist and filmmaker whose practice encompasses film, video, photography, sculpture, performance and, more recently, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. His work explores power, violence, memory, nationalism and the psychological effects of social and political structures, often using staged situations and documentary techniques to create unsettling encounters between performers, subjects and viewers.
Koizumi has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; De Pont Museum, Tilburg; and Pérez Art Museum Miami. His solo exhibitions include Project Series 99 at MoMA (2013), Theaters of Life at De Pont Museum (2025), Good Machine Bad Machine at Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2023), The Altars at MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo (2024), and Battlelands at Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Recent group exhibitions include Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989–2010 at The National Art Center, Tokyo (2025), Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Japan at Christchurch Art Gallery (2025), the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), As Though We Hid the Sea of Stories at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2023), Listen to the Sound of the Earth Turning at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2022), and Artes Mundi 9 at National Museum Cardiff (2021).
Year: 2018
Artist: Meiro Koizumi
Exhibition: Battlelands
Venue: White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London
Works: Battlelands; Sleeping Boy
Catalogue: Essays by Dr Isobel Harbison and an in-conversation between Meiro Koizumi and Jason Waite, with installation photographs
Country: United Kingdom