BUG, which is operated by Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., will hold ,” a solo exhibition by Kenji Chiga, from (Wed.) March 6, 2023. This exhibition is being organized in line with one of BUG’s activity directives, namely “Providing Career Support,”* with the objective of serving as a stepping stone for an artist looking to take their career to the next level.

Chiga won the Grand Prize at the 16th “1_WALL” Photography Competition** in 2017 with his entry “Bird, Night, and then,” which addressed aspects of Indian society such as its caste system, poverty, and its overbearing emphasis on academic credentials. At “1_WALL,” the artist was praised for his perspective, understanding social phenomena in a structured manner, his ability to edit in such a way that blends fiction and non-fiction, and his adroit handling of the photographic medium. As the competition’s Grand Prize winner, he also held his first solo exhibition, “Suppressed Voice,” at Guardian Garden in 2018. In terms of international acclaim, Chiga won the at the 8th Dali International Photography Exhibition in China (2019), was shortlisted for the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles at the Rencontres d’Arles international festival of photography in France (2019, 2022), and was named by the British Journal of Photography in its annual list of “Ones To Watch” in 2019—he has exhibited his work, and been recognized, around the world.

Chiga’s practice has been to create work based on social issues close to himself, such as the connection between poverty and suicide, and social , exposing the social structures that cause these problems and the perspectives of those involved. Chiga takes a bird’s-eye view of these problems and the people concerned, and his stance of ensuring neutrality through years of scrupulous research is evident. Underlying this approach are a conscious effort to avoid setting up binary oppositions, and a hope that viewers will gain a sense of their own interest in social issues. His works have come to act as a springboard for viewers to engage their own creativity with respect to society and others.

This exhibition showcases installation work themed around special fraud, a subject that Chiga spent around three years researching since 2019. It addresses both the social structures surrounding the phenomenon and individuals related to it, employing different media including photography and video. The titular series, To begin with, we must try to do things ourselves, consists of portrait photographs of Chiga posing as both fraudsters and their victims. These have been printed on water-soluble paper, which is often used by scam groups to destroy evidence, then sprayed with water. This dissolves and deforms the images beyond recognition, leaving viewers to imagine the faded faces they had shown. Losses due to special fraud peaked in 2014 and had been on a downward trend until 2021, when Chiga first exhibited work on this topic. Over the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the figure began to rise again, with 2022 marking the first uptick in eight years. The works in this exhibition focus on the factors underlying this increase, highlighting how individual lives were affected by societal shifts and the changing times.