The Thousands

We all have those moments when we think, sure, there are a million great things on tonight but fuck it, I’m just going to go home and take off my pants. Removing yourself from social interaction can only last so long, usually until you have to go to work the next day or you run out of peanut butter and/or episodes of Breaking Bad.

For over a million people in Japan, this home-bound social avoidance can go on for decades! Hikikomori – or ‘shut-in syndrome’ – is an acute personality disorder resembling post-traumatic stress but with symptoms unique to the Japanese environment. After experiencing a social trauma, hikikomori confine themselves to their bedrooms for days, months and – in extreme cases – years on end, existing on a diet of anime, manga, gemu (video games), online chats and forums, surviving only through their almost parasitic dependence on their parents.

Eugenia Lim is a video and cross-media artist who uses her practice to question themes of identity, cultural stereotypes, mythology and race. Her latest body of work, Oasis, draws on the Hikikomori phenomenon. Through a series of light boxes, videos and installations in which she is her own subject, Lim evokes the cave-like bedroom pillow fortress of the troubled Japanese recluse, referencing the Shintu myth of Amaterasu, the sun goddess who locked herself in a cave and caused the earth to descend into darkness.