A clay bowl, made by a craftsperson in their workshop, is bought at a market for a few euros and used at home to eat soup.
That same piece, with the same material, the same process, and the same maker, is sold in a museum for several thousand euros and exhibited as a work of art.
Beyond the context in which we find it—since the mere fact of being in a museum does not turn something into a work of art—beyond the author's narrative intention—no matter how much I say my work is art, that does not automatically make it so—or beyond its perceived scarcity and its status as a unique piece validated by experts, who are ultimately just carriers of interpretive biases—what, in the terms of philosopher Walter Benjamin, may bring an object closer to art is its "aura": the perception we have of it when it leaves its original function.
That "aura" is greatly amplified by the passage of time, and when we look at past objects with 21st-century eyes, their allegorical capacity is exponentially enhanced. A Venus of Düsseldorf is as valuable as a Botero sculpture, even if one is earlier than the very concept of "art" and the other is one of its clearest exponents.
We should keep in mind that it is only in Classical Greece that the concept of art is defined as we understand it today: a representation, an imitation, a way to make the ephemeral beauty of nature persistent.
These are two clear elements to include something in the category of "art": its function—when this relates to the absence of a clear purpose, such as contemplation, meditation, or reflection, or even lacks purpose and function altogether—and the intention of its author in creating it.
These are the points from which we will distinguish whether the same box of supermarket detergent, intended to wash clothes, is a consumer object, or whether, installed by Andy Warhol in a museum to subvert the moment and draw attention to consumption, is a work of art.
It is this transcendence, beyond institutions and markets, that separates art from consumption.
If we attend to its scarcity, its recommendation, or its location, a pre-phylloxera French wine, recommended by a great sommelier and presented in a restaurant of recognized prestige, will have high economic, oenological, and gastronomic value, but not artistic value.
In the field of shibari, when someone refers to it as "art," I always prepare for the worst. Even more so in Spanish, where two accumulated errors come together.
I am not entirely sure, but I think this confusion comes from Midori's book, which identified shibari as "the art of Japanese bondage." That "art" comes from the Japanese term jutsu, which refers more to "technique and craft"—art and craft, artesanía—than to art properly speaking.
Thus, a farmer has their jutsu to tie the tomato plant to the structure that supports it; a merchant, to pack the cloths they sell; and a rancher, to handle and manage livestock.
If we add that, in Spanish, among the uses and meanings of the term "arte" we find from skill and a positive attitude to the fine arts themselves, the precision with which the term is applied to shibari becomes more than confusing.
It is common to encounter photos or performances to which the label "art" is automatically applied, right off the bat, without any technical criterion or purpose, simply due to our brain's need to label and classify to simplify processes.
But let's be honest: behind the self-proclaimed artistic claim usually comes an empty, bland proposal, lacking meaning and technical value, yet applauded, preserving both the ego of the "artist" and the social and identity integration and acceptance of the viewer.
We start from the fact that shibari is a technique (jutsu), like engraving or ceramics, and that it is its purpose and the perception of the observer that elevate it to the category of art.
Then, like any technique applied to art, it will be valued in a dual facet: one purely technical, which evaluates the way it is applied and the effect sought with that application, and another conceptual, which weighs the artistic proposal and its reach.
The financial valuation of art is another matter.
The second criterion is harder to apply, since the perception of reality varies from one person to another; it is a truly emotional process, related to the way we value what exists outside our body in relation to what happens inside it. Something naturally changing, but which tells us much about the person's state and their social context.
Here, concepts like "statistical normality" will determine whether that artistic appreciation is "acceptable" for the group or an "aberration" in that moment and context. Thus, in a modern and cultured society, a woman's naked body may cause maximum indifference, while in an Islamic republic governed by sharia it may imply her execution.
Artistic Facets of Shibari
But let's return to shibari and its artistic dimension, which can be erotic, but will rarely be explicitly sexual, unless it is a participatory performance or a happening.
And although in its origin it arises as an "artistic" expression with high pornographic charge—through stories, illustrations, photography, and films—beyond the biases associated with the trade of scarce and collectible merchandise, the qualitative valuation of these original pieces is practically null.
The photographs are casual, merely descriptive; the illustrations are suggestive for those who like bondage or Japanese exoticism, but they do not stand out on a plastic level; and the films, due to the crudeness of their themes and the poverty in the use of audiovisual language, remain far from any association with art. They are vessels meant to serve soup.
Truly, it is in narrative where I find the least references. Yes, I am sure that if I check online platforms I will find dozens of stories written by AI on this theme, but I do not even bother to evaluate them.
I understand that, in a world where immediacy prevails, where digital wins over analog—not in writing, but in editing and delivering a story or narration to a target audience—the task is today tremendously complicated.
The days of pulp publications from the second half of the 20th century are long gone, when even renowned authors earned a salary writing BDSM-themed stories. And that, referring to bondage; if we go to shibari, beyond Japanese authors such as Oniroku Dan or Edogawa Rampo, or groups linked to eroguro (erotic and grotesque), little more can be found.
In the article on Azumi Kawahara's work, we refer to the sociological and historical value of publications such as Kitan Club.
Photography and Graphic Arts
The graphic arts—illustration, engraving, and, by extension, photography, for its capacity to capture and fix an ephemeral instant—find in shibari a field of exploration.
Not only the emotional instant, but also more abstract concepts such as volume, form, and movement are present in the work of numerous artists. The work of Inna Krauze comes to mind, a Russian artist based in Spain, who uses the bound body and ropes as a matrix for her engravings.
If you visit the catalog of specialized galleries, such as that of Vainilla Gallery, you will find a broad display of artists, styles, and aesthetic approaches to Japanese bondage.
Araki, with his photography, seeks to explore the concepts of eros and thanatos, oscillating between tradition and the subversion of it, trying to show the inner person through the exposure and violation of their exterior.
Norio Sugiura, through his mastery of both photographic and tying technique, creates scenes and visual compositions in which, from a traditionally Japanese optic and aesthetic, the beauty of suffering and restraint is recreated as intense emotional experiences.
One is conceptual and figurative; the other, direct and focused on documenting the act of being tied. They are just two examples of the range of approaches that photography unfolds before shibari.
The aura that the passage of time grants to some creations makes us value them differently today. This is the case of illustrations and photographs from the early 20th century that add to their value a precursor and subversive component regarding the morality of their time, an extra that today elevates them, for many, to the artistic plane.
After all, a vessel used in ancient Rome to hold oil is today a piece exhibited in museums, for the wonder and enjoyment of the public.
Sequential Arts
Sequential arts, such as cinema or comics, are hampered in this field by industry dictates. Editing a graphic work or distributing a film, until very recently, was out of reach for ordinary people.
To this is added that the greater part of this production was aimed at the niche pornographic content market, where quantity prevails over quality.
In the article dedicated to Tohiro, we explain how a small producer could release up to eight titles each month.
But even so, some productions stand out for their quality, beauty, and emotional capacity, beyond the function of quick relief for which they were created. Most of them are found in the Dogma catalog.
Looking back, the oldest versions of Flower and Snake, especially the 1974 one, can be included in the chapter of works to which time adds artistic value.
Within Japanese noir cinema of the second half of the 20th century there are various very interesting works, rough as they may be, which directly or tangentially include shibari as part of their narrative.
And in comics, we enter an unfathomable universe, where manga and anime have made shibari one of their preferred niches. But it is still a bowl for soup, and only some illustrations or occasional works transcend that function.
Performing Arts and Other Performance Proposals
Here we do enter the totum revolutum of the appreciation of shibari as a means of artistic expression. By itself, performance art is open to anyone who wants to be an artist climbing onto a stage and exhibiting themselves.
But, of course, there is a considerable margin between a children's show about Peppa Pig in the school gym and a performance of Electra by Margarita Xirgu in the Roman theater of Mérida.
Most of the time, a simple display of skills is labeled as art—many times with few acrobatic skills, with technical poverty in the execution of shibari, and with absence of stage sense—but yes, with a lot of feeling and serious faces, as if something smelled bad on stage.
We should keep in mind that shibari shows originate in nightclubs as just another entertainment. In the legendary Phantom Show, the shibari number was, so to speak, the opener for the "double enema" number.
Privated of that explicitly sexual function, replicating the steps and poses that our favorite artist executes in any of the adult films in which they appear is empty and futile. It is very showy for the inexperienced and novice eye, like that soda bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy, but nothing more.
If we move to more acrobatic approaches, where appreciation comes from complexity, difficulty, and risk—if we accept the circus as an artistic expression—it is rare to find numbers that demonstrate the preparation, effort, and overcoming that marvel us in an Olympic gymnast or in a Cirque du Soleil acrobat.
But then let's use the term performance as an umbrella; there everything fits, it accepts everything, since performance is a defined artistic expression, based on the live execution of the work by the artist before their audience. The experience is more important than the result—or rather, it was, since this formula had its origin in a specific moment and sociocultural context, and aimed to break social and artistic barriers of its time.
Today, performances tend to resemble more school end-of-term shows than the Fluxus movement or the delirious Chris Burden, although many shibari shows recall their interest in linking pain, risk, and spectacle... though I would say that this conceptual game is not intentional.
But the artistic peripheries of performative shibari can be stretched and even cover "textile arts" (fiber art), where the scorned macramé would enter—not only those dresses made of ropes, but also interventions in urban spaces carried out by those who cover benches, lampposts, and palm trees with crochet.
Within fiber art, one of the most known proposals is that of Chiharu Shiota, whose installations not only receive recognition from specialized criticism, but are truly overwhelming.
But she is not the only one, and although it seems that a certain Japanese tie artist wants to appropriate the concept, fiber art has much more interesting proposals than his.
A clear example is Swilk, who defines themselves as a queer fiber installation artist and whose installations revolve around the history of the queer movement and their own emotional experience.
One thing I would highlight from their work is the fusion of fibers with automatisms that respond to public intervention, approaching the concept of happening.
Swilk created an immersive artistic exhibition titled "When you're looking for something, it's important to know who was in love," which used motors programmed in the fabrics to respond to interactions with historical web resources about HIV/AIDS.
In this video (in English), they explain a bit more about their proposal and motivations.
And it might seem that all fiber art is dark, dense, and tormented, but it is not: the Mexican Gabriel Dawe, known for his large-scale installations of colored threads that stretch space into geometric forms, explores perception and Mexican textile tradition. His works occupy from galleries to public spaces, creating vibrant and luminous atmospheres.
For those who have the opportunity, the CA2M (Madrid) hosts exhibitions and collections of contemporary textile art that include works with threads, ropes, and fibers from the 1970s to the present, underscoring the importance of considering the tradition of spinning as a useful tool to investigate narratives linked to the complexity of the treatment of fibers in knots, twists, and cuts.
Again, a craft, a jutsu, crosses the barriers of the practical and utilitarian to become a vehicle of artistic expression.
One of the properties of artistic expression is that it motivates us to think, to debate, to contrast, and to question reality and our perception of it.
We do not address here other artistic disciplines, such as sculpture, where some artists explore from the transfer of volumes and tensions to various rigid and static materials, or the creation of molds using casting techniques with bound bodies for that purpose. Not due to lack of interest or value, but because we do not have sufficient information or documentation to make a valuable contribution.
This article will be followed by others more specific, addressing both authors and works and areas of artistic expression, seeking to answer questions such as: Is everything that is done on a stage performing art? Is every bundle of threads textile art? Is shibari any tying with ropes?