I hear it well but scarcely grasp it I Painting

Kae Sasaki’s work speaks of the complexity of modern identity, and displacement that can be felt when straddling different cultures. This series of interior paintings entitled I hear it well but scarcely grasp it of Teatro alla Scala in Milan (among the first cultural institutions to close amid COVID-19 outbreak in northern Italy) culminated from her experience in a production of die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a Wagner opera once famously misappropriated by the Nazis, set in an allegorical post-war 1950’s Germany. The uneasy, ironic parallel she drew to the Berlin Pact of 1940 from her attendance as Japanese patron at a German opera, written by a composer suspected of his antisemitism and performed in once Mussolini Italy, was shared by an Italian audience as this opera had not been performed at la Scala for 27 years. As director Harry Kupfer urges the value of tolerance rather than exclusion would allow artistic traditions to be renewed, Sasaki depicts the experience and audiences as fragments of culture, bringing together disparate ideas that coagulate to suggest our hyper-connected yet fragile world. The painting comes with D rings and hanging wires already installed. The gold-leaf underneath and gold paint catch light and appear illuminated even in a near dark room. Interior of opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy.