The exhibition "CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI - ANIMITAS II," showcasing the works of French artist Christian Boltanski, is being held at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo in Omotesando, Tokyo, from June 13th to November 17th.

Animitas (Dead Mothers), Dead Sea, Israel 2017
Installation view, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, 2019 Full HD video, color, sound 10 hours 33 minutes
Courtesy of the Fondation Louis Vuitton Photo credits: Jérémie Souteyrat/Louis Vuitton © Adagp, Paris 2019


Christian Boltanski is a major figure in contemporary art and one of the most influential living French artists. Since 1967, Boltanski has explored a wide range of artistic styles, including writing, film, sculpture, and photography. Drawing on events from his own life and those of anonymous or unidentified people, his work incorporates autobiographical and historical references, combining fact and fiction to "reconstruct" the past.

The exhibition will feature two video works, "Animitas (Whispering Forest)" and "Animitas (Dead Mothers)," which are part of one of Boltanski's most ambitious projects in recent years. Each "Animitas" film was shot in a single continuous take from sunrise to sunset and will be screened alongside a carpet of flowers. The flowers change shape in accordance with the laws of nature as time passes and visitors pass by, while the gentle sound of wind chimes echoes throughout the space, evoking what Boltanski calls "the music of the stars and the voices of wandering souls."

Animitas (Forest of Whispers), Japan 2016
Installation view, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, 2019 Full HD video, color, sound 12 hours 52 minutes 21 seconds
Courtesy of the Fondation Louis Vuitton Photo credits: Jérémie Souteyrat/Louis Vuitton © Adagp, Paris 2019


Animitas originated as an installation set up in a vast, remote outdoor space as a tribute to small roadside altars dedicated to the dead. Three hundred Japanese wind chimes sway from the tips of thin rods thrust into the earth, tracing the constellations of the stars on the night of September 6, 1944, the day Boltanski was born. The first installation in this series was created in Chile's Atacama Desert, known as one of the driest places in the world. The same basic layout has since been reinterpreted and installed in three other locations: Teshima Island in Japan (Whispering Forest, 2016), the Île d'Orléans in Quebec (White, 2017), and the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel (Dead Mothers, autumn 2017). These installations, destined to disappear over time, attempt to unite Boltanski's personal history with the story of the places in which they are installed—the story of the thousands of souls who have died.

His austere and austere installations, each crafted in universal language that anyone can understand, speak to the precariousness of human existence, forgetting, loss, the fragility of memory, and the passage of time.