Teiji Furuhashi's 1994 Installation Lovers Revisits MoMA with Haunting Projections

Teiji Furuhashi's 1994 video installation Lovers was presented at the Museum of Modern Art from July 30, 2016 to February 12, 2017. The work occupied a small square room branching from MoMA's second-floor hallway at 11 West 53rd Street in New York. Projected figures from the artist collective Dumb Type, which Furuhashi helped establish in 1984, moved across black walls. Seven projectors stacked in a tower emitted beams that traced the room's contours while audio provided a chirping pulse. Dancers appeared nude, moving in synchronicity or pursuing each other through corners and planes. Vertical lines inscribed with words like 'limit' and 'fear' roved the space, mapping bodies and walls. The installation's white Marley floor created a glossy surface that dominated vision in the low light. Viewers entering the space became part of the work as projections flickered across their bodies. Furuhashi died from AIDS-related illness in 1995, shortly after Lovers was first installed at MoMA. The work evokes themes of mortality, vulnerability, and unrequited desire rather than romance. Figures overlap in a Venn diagram-like silhouette that approximates but never achieves union. The artist himself appears in the video, standing with outstretched arms before falling away. Lovers presents a vision of futurity from the early 1990s, now existing as a cyclical work facing obsolescence.