Iftikhar Dadi & Elizabeth Dadi’s ‘Garden Invaders’ are lit and kickin’ at the Morgan Japanese Garden, Johnson Museum of…

Iftikhar Dadi & Elizabeth Dadi’s ‘Garden Invaders’ are lit and kickin’ at the Morgan Japanese Garden, Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University.

‘Garden Invaders’ is a playful homage to Japanese aesthetics, and consists of four backlit sculptures in the Johnson Museum’s Morgan Japanese Garden. Designed by I.M. Pei, the museum’s brutalist concrete walls frame the small courtyard, exemplifying the precision, serenity, and balanced aesthetics that characterize traditional Japanese gardens.

The sculptures are shaped like extruded pixelated alien figures, inspired by early digital graphics. Their front surfaces are visibly divided into blocks of flat, square color, illuminated from within, and their sides are shaped to match this pixelation. They are installed above a large glass window, in an architectural recess that invites placement as a sculptural relief. The work evokes a post-apocalyptic alien descent into the garden, reminiscent of early computer games.

This aesthetic also recalls influential Japanese ‘kaiju’ super-creatures and biomorphic invaders from the postwar era. Partly developed as a response to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the release of uncontrolled destructive forces, this visuality evokes both fascination and fear of a technologized but uncharted future.

[Iftikhar Dadi, Elizabeth Dadi, Contemporary Art]
@jhavericontemporary