In 2018, The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited Roger Weston’s collection of 17th century Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan. The museum referred to the “beauties” in these portraits as “courtesans, geishas, actors, or women in scenes of everyday life” in The Floating World, a pleasure quarter similar to what we know as the red-light district. The narrative offered by the museum focuses on aesthetics, fixating on the subject’s great beauty and impeccable style. The audio tour created by The Art Institute of Chicago did not mention the brutal living conditions the women endured. The museum failed to provide viewers the whole story.
I interviewed Dr. Amy Stanley, a historian of early modern and modern Japan, and created an alternate audio tour for this exhibition to provide the truth regarding what the subjects in these paintings lived through. These women were sex slaves. Many of them were children sold to brothel keepers by their impoverished families. They were often beaten, starved, and suffered from sexually transmitted diseases. If they died while imprisoned, they were buried in mass graves. Brothel keepers sometimes locked the prostitutes they owned in a box. If a child sex slave ran away back to her family, the parents were required to return their daughter back to the brothel keeper, as part of the contract.
This audio tour was played in the museum during a guerrilla performance, where a group of participants synchronized their iphones and played the alternate audio tour while walking throughout the exhibition, amplifying the sound so the audio could be heard by those viewing the paintings.
Please listen to the alternate audio tour below.