Past Exhibitions
Sat, Sep 16, 2023 - Sun, Dec 17
Towada Art Center will hold a solo exhibition of the artist Mino Arata at its satellite venue space from September 16 to December 17, 2023.
With a background in theater and photography, the transdisciplinary artist Mino Arata writes scripts based on the histories and memories that lie dormant in a place or landscape, which he then stages in the form of performances and installations.
Long interested in the issue of United States military bases in Japan, Mino has previously created work about Okinawa, where around 70 percent of US military bases in the country are located. This exhibition features his new script, Till Things Are Quiet, which he wrote based on research conducted in Misawa, Aomori, home to a US air force base. In his earlier To/From Kuba, Mino explored the problems related to an artist living in Tokyo’s right to address Okinawa in their work. Last year, he spent six months in New York doing research for a work dealing from a more macro perspective with how we live with a sense of impending war. Inhabiting as we do in an increasingly uncertain world, Mino’s new work calls on us to confront what is sleeping under the surface of our minds.
The exhibition comprises a series of installations at several sites, including Towada Art Center’s satellite venue space and other locations around the city. It employs an experimental approach by which the script is spread across the various venues. Visitors move from venue to venue, reading the different parts of the script and gradually experiencing the whole work.
The script is available to read here.
Exhibitions at Satellite Venue space
In 2022, the Towada Art Center began repurposing the artwork space—an empty building transformed into an exhibition room by the art collective 目 [mé]—to serve as a satellite venue. Located on the second floor, the white cube gallery of space stands in stark contrast with its surroundings and is now used to showcase the experimental work of emerging artists.
Photo: Mino Arata, Design: Ishizuka Shun
MINO Arata
Interdisciplinary artist Mino Arata was born in 1987 in Fukuoka Prefecture. His research and practice focus on connecting the memories and landscapes left in marginalized places and objects, bringing to the foreground the intermediary elements that connect “here” and “there.” He works across disciplines, primarily creating fictional narratives based on his own photographs and videos and presenting them through various media and his own body and those of others. Mino graduated in 2011 from the Theatre and Film Arts course in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Waseda University. In 2017, he earned a Ph.D. in Art after completing a doctoral program in the Department of Intermedia Art at the Tokyo University of the Arts. From 2022 to 2023, Mino lived and worked in New York as an Asian Cultural Council fellow as part of the Summer 2022 cohort. He is currently based in Tokyo and Kanagawa. Recent major exhibitions and performances include SEAsaw: SAILING THE COSMIC SEA, Kiso River (mh PROJECT nokogirini, Aichi, 2023), YAU TEN (YAU STUDIO, Tokyo, 2022), To/From Kuba (ANB Tokyo, 2021), Exercise of Falling Well (Kyoto Art Center, 2019). www.aratamino.com
Title
Date
Venues
space
Address: 18-20 Nishi Sanbancho, Towada / Hours: 10:00 – 17:00, Tue – Sun
Closed Mondays (Except for National Holidays, in which case the venue will close the next day)
Towada Art Center Art Square
Address: 3 Nishi Sanbancho, Towada / Hours: 10:00 – 17:00, Tue – Sun
Closed Mondays (Except for National Holidays, in which case the venue will close the next day)
Super Hotel Towada
Address: 17-43 Inaoicho, Towada / Hours: 15:00 – 23:00, Mon – Sun
14-54 (Community Space)
Address: 14-54 Inaoicho, Towada / Hours: 12:00 – 16:30, Tue – Sun
Admission
Free
Organized by
Towada Art Center
Supported by
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in the fiscal 2023
In Cooperation with
Endorsed by
Asahi Broadcasting Aomori Co., Ltd., Aomori Broadcasting
Corporation, Aomori Television Broadcasting Co., Ltd., Aomori
Fm Broadcasting, The Daily-Tohoku Shimbun Inc., The To-o Nippo
Press, and Towada City Board of Education
Curator
Toyama Aruma
ON/OFF and the shore
2022, Photo: TOKYO PHOTOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
*reference image
To/From Kuba Performance Project
Direction: Yang Ikumi, Performance: Ishikawa Asahi,
Akamatsu Ayu, MARU OHREI, 2022
*reference image
Photobook To/From Kuba
Cover Design & Layout: Yamamoto Hiroki＋h（Inunosenakaza）, 2021
*Reference work
No related events to display.
