Exhibition Statement ‘ Jojofinity: A JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Fan Art Show’ is a creative deep dive into the artistic fanbase community surrounding Hirihiko Araki’s seminal anime and manga series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Spanning over 25 years of serialisation, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is considered vital text in the era of modern anime, with Araki’s work rallying a dedicated fanbase due to its iterative storytelling techniques, unabashed personality, unique aesthetic and its extremely unconventional stances on queerness, gender and representation within the shounen genre.
In JoJofinity artists working across a variety of print, audio-visual, and sculptural mediums create pieces that respond to challenges and questions raised by the text and reflect on its impact inwards. The show brings forth avenues of investigation previously unseen within fan art — whether that be an investigation into kitsch aesthetics as a veil for societal violence — the inherent conflict of visuals and ideals in performative masculinity — or the thin line in fashion that delineates the campy and the glamourous.
JoJofinity is a love letter by a community that ultimately still faces discrimination in the art world as being deemed unintellectual and overly referential. With this show, we provide onlookers a chance to peek into not only the products of fan artists, but also understand their motivations in creating transformative work that not only embraces its source material but allows it to transcend it into a hopefully recognisable and legitimate art making framework. Thus, providing critique, insight, references, fervour and passion into pieces of pop culture that enter public perception.
Spanning over 25 years of serialisation, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is considered vital text in the era of modern anime, with Araki’s work rallying a dedicated fanbase due to its iterative storytelling techniques, unabashed personality, unique aesthetic and its extremely unconventional stances on queerness, gender and representation within the shounen genre.
In JoJofinity artists working across a variety of print, audio-visual, and sculptural mediums create pieces that respond to challenges and questions raised by the text and reflect on its impact inwards. The show brings forth avenues of investigation previously unseen within fan art — whether that be an investigation into kitsch aesthetics as a veil for societal violence — the inherent conflict of visuals and ideals in performative masculinity — or the thin line in fashion that delineates the campy and the glamourous.
JoJofinity is a love letter by a community that ultimately still faces discrimination in the art world as being deemed unintellectual and overly referential. With this show, we provide onlookers a chance to peek into not only the products of fan artists, but also understand their motivations in creating transformative work that not only embraces its source material but allows it to transcend it into a hopefully recognisable and legitimate art making framework. Thus, providing critique, insight, references, fervour and passion into pieces of pop culture that enter public perception.
