The Towada Art Center is pleased to present LONELY PLANETS, the first solo museum exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker Yu ARAKI, from Saturday, December 9, 2023, to Sunday, March 31, 2024.
Having spent his youth moving between Japan and the United States, Yu Araki explores the nuances of language and culture, examining the mistranslations and misunderstandings that arise, as well as the dynamics between originals and copies and the power structures they reveal. His film and video works, which often employ a blend of documentary and animation, are known for their humorous yet insightful approach.
The exhibition’s title, LONELY PLANETS, was inspired by a misheard song lyric that resonated with Araki due to its similarity to the name of the globally recognized travel guidebook series. This title reflects Araki’s journey through Aomori and his experiences and encounters with the people, landscapes, and motifs that appear in the exhibition as if he were a traveler exploring unfamiliar territory. The exhibition showcases four new video works developed through Araki’s extensive research, alongside three past works (tentative). These pieces, like independent planets, each with their own orbits, coincidentally converge in the heart of winter in Towada, inviting viewers into one galaxy within Araki’s creative universe.
The Towada Art Center is excited to present the first-ever exhibition in Japan dedicated entirely to the work of Shanghai-based artist Liu Jianhua. Growing up in the city of Jingdezhen, ancient home of porcelain, Liu spent time working in a porcelain factory before studying sculpture, and now uses clay, stone, glass, pottery and other materials to create sculptural objects and installations on the themes of economic and social change in China, and the issues arising from this transformation.
For this exhibition the main gallery will play host to Discard (2002/2023), which features everyday items from plastic drink bottles to shoes, all crafted in porcelain. Having served their fleeting purpose, most of the items we use from day to day are abandoned and become broken, turning into what seems to be trash. Discard evokes modern lives surrounded by materials that do not revert to the earth, and how we persist in piling up on the land things that defy proper disposal. Other works spanning Liu’s career from early years to more recent times include his latest, Porcelain Tower (2022), which consists of just the mouths and necks of bottles and jars, plus the floating pillow of Regular/Fragile (2001–3), whose form leads to that of the later Mark in the Space (2010), part of the TAC permanent collection; as well as Trace (2011), which resembles black ink stains running down a wall, or the fluid glaze used to finish ceramic pieces. The exhibition title Fluid void calls to mind hollow pottery forms and the flow of glaze, but also indicates Liu’s approach to art-making, which involves incorporating in his works a “meaninglessness” devoid of either meaning or content. The title Fluid voids is also related to the current state of society, with its ever-expanding empty things both tangible and intangible. Here delicate, fragile pottery speaks of these most hollow of times.
Discard, 2001-2015, Porcelain, Variable dimensions
© Liujianhua Studio
First Solo Museum Exhibition by Emerging Artist Aya Momose
The Towada Art Center is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Aya Momose from December 10, 2022, to June 4, 2023. Momose is known for her video works, which explore perspectives surrounding the body, sexuality, and gender on themes across multiple layers of communication. In Momose’s latest exhibition, female voice actors take center stage. In Japan, female actors often voice young male characters in anime productions, such as Megumi Ogata’s voicing of Shinji Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Mayumi Tanaka playing the role of Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece. Momose explores the fluid relationship between the gender of the voice actor and that of the character they inhabit. Through new and past works exploring these themes, this exhibition lends a voice to the marginalized and underrepresented groups who lack one.
Image: Social Dance, 2019
Single-channel video, 10′ 33″
*Reference work
A series of video installations around Towada City by interdisciplinary artist Aoyagi Natsumi
Towada Art Center will hold a solo exhibition of the artist Aoyagi Natsumi at its satellite venue space from Saturday, September 17 to Sunday, December 18, 2022.
In her practice, Aoyagi Natsumi uses moving image and writing to capture the invisible and engage with her surrounding environment. In recent years, she has explored the contemporary nature of the individual as well as ways to observe this through crowdsourcing and collecting the stories and images of others.
Marking her first solo show in six years, the exhibition presents artworks in the form of a fictional nautical logbook inspired by the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, belief in whom spread through sea travel. A ship or boat is no longer a means of transport that most of us use regularly in our everyday lives, but was once the only way of traveling to a distant place and enabled people to embark on dangerous adventures to unknown lands. From records of sea voyages to science fiction’s spacecraft, ships have appeared in countless examples of literature over the centuries. Belief in the sea goddess Mazu spread across East Asia as seafarers moved around the region. Cocktails are said to have developed as a way of keeping sailors hydrated and healthy during long sea voyages in the Age of Discovery. The exhibition features video installations interweaving such nautical elements from past and present, East and West, and unfolding like a picture book across six locations in Towada: the art center’s satellite venue, space, and its café as well as a flower shop, spa, and two bars. The hopes and struggles of the vast numbers of people who crossed the seas in the past, along with the living creatures, alcoholic drinks, and beliefs rooted in each place. The shipless logbook that Aoyagi creates invites us, living as we do in uncertain times, to embark on a journey where we encounter these people and things, still quietly living in our present-day world.
*Translations of each exhibit are available via the following link. PDF
