A new exhibit at the Johnson Museum, “Garden Invaders,” offers a playful homage to Japanese aesthetics, past and present, say the artists, Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor of History of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Elizabeth Dadi. The exhibition features four backlit sculptures shaped like digital, pixelated aliens.
The original Johnson Museum building, designed by I. M. Pei in 1973, features concrete walls that partially enclose the Morgan Japanese Garden, created in 2011 on the museum’s north side. “The alien figures are installed on an exterior wall overlooking the garden space, whose serene atmosphere, evoking a traditional Japanese garden, is set against the imposing concrete architecture surrounding it,” the Dadis write in their exhibit description.
“Their elevated placement evokes a postapocalyptic alien descent into the garden, reminiscent of early computer games,” the Dadis write. “This aesthetic also recalls influential Japanese kaiju super-creatures and biomorphic invaders from the postwar era into the present. 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.”
The aesthetic contrast between the garden and the aliens, the artists write, serves as an allegory for “geopolitical tensions, a growing indifference toward ecological harm, and the colonization of our consciousness by synthetic creations.”
In addition to his teaching and research on modern and contemporary art from a global and transnational perspective, emphasizing questions of methodology and intellectual history, Iftikhar Dadi works collaboratively as an artist with Elizabeth Dadi. Their art explores questions of memory and borders in contemporary globalization, and the productive capacities of urban informalities across the Global South. Their practice draws on archaeology, cinema and art historical references, while engaging with site-specificity, as in their Johnson Museum exhibit. Their work has been exhibited widely internationally.
“Garden Invaders” was supported in part by the Johnson Museum’s Ames Exhibition Endowment and will remain on view through spring 2027.
Linda B. Glaser is news and media relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences.
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