From December 9 2023 to March 31 2024, the Towada Art Center will present an exhibition of work by artist Yu Araki.
Having spent his youth moving between Japan and the United States, with this vacillating identity as a springboard Araki employs his excellent visual language skills and knack for interweaving imagery to create movie, documentary and animated works dealing with subjects such as mistranslations and misunderstandings between different cultures, both globally and domestically; the relationship between original and reproduction, and interaction between the different types of gaze arising from looking and being looked at.
For this first-ever solo presentation at an art museum, Araki spent two-and-a-half years undertaking research in Aomori Prefecture. The result is a vision of Aomori today through his eyes: of a place shaped by human endeavor in the form of traditional crafts and customs, by recent historical happenings, and by major natural events that have transformed its topography. The exhibition will focus primarily on new works based on the artist’s experiences in the prefecture.

十和田市现代美术馆于2023年6月24日（六）至11月19日（日）举办以上海为据点的中国艺术家刘建华的展览。这是他在日本举办的首次个展。

本館自2010年起常设展出刘建华的作品《痕迹》（FRP材质），是一件可以让人们躺平放松的巨大绿色枕头；2011年他也参与了本館举办的东日本大地震重建慈善展「Hearts Towada Exhibition」。在本次个展「倾注中空」中，展出的作品都以「瓷器」制成。瓷器是刘建华自创作初期就持续运用的材料，在进入大学修习雕塑之前，他曾是一名瓷器工厂的匠师。刘建华的作品拆解了日常用品「瓷器」的用途与形式，以中国的经济变迁与社会变迁，以及随之产生的问题作为创作主题。在中国艺术家中，刘建华是将瓷器这个素材带入当代艺术中实践的先驱者。他通过自身创作的原点――纤细易碎的「瓷器」，试图阐述充满空虚无常的当代。

本次展览的核心作品是《遗弃》（2001年-2015年）。展厅的地板上散落着各种各样的瓷器打碎后的日常用品，如电视、鞋子、瓶子、轮胎等。这些日常用品都来自刘建华与家人朋友使用过的物件，再经过翻模烧制而成。这件作品是他首次运用瓷器这种既坚硬又脆弱的材质，也成为刘建华创作风格的转捩点。瓷器的脆弱性展现了日常生活的变化无常，作品仿若一座当代社会的废墟。

2022年9月在复星艺术中心（Fosun Foundation Shanghai）展出的新作品《塔器》也将首次在日本展出。《塔器》是一件在展厅中央的白色塔状架子上陈列各种器皿的作品。在《塔器》中，不论是佛教文化中存放舍利子的精神象征、自古以来存在的「塔」，还是具备包裹事物之空间特性的「器」，都脱离了传统的意义和形态，进而转换。在主要的展览空间中，《塔器》展示在铺满整个地板的作品《遗弃》之中，让观者在虚实之间游走，这也深化了这两件作品彼此的概念。

A museum exhibition by artist Momose Aya, who uses video and performance techniques to explore questions of gender and sexuality

From December 10 (Sat) 2022 to June 4 (Sun) 2023, the Towada Art Center is pleased to present Interpreter, a solo exhibition by Momose Aya. Taking as her theme the imbalances that arise in our communications with others, Momose explores questions around the body, sexuality and gender, mainly in video works. At this exhibition she unveils a new sound installation on the theme of female voice actors, titled Etude for a Voice Actor. Etude for a Voice Actor features just a “voice” with no accompanying animation showing the appearance and gestures of the character that would make it possible to discern their sex. This “voice” divorced from any visuals manifests as a fluid presence transcending sex. In addition to this latest work, Interpreter features a number of earlier offerings by the artist that show relationships with others of different ages and sexes, and the invisible presences and suppression behind these relationships. These include Social Dance, which depicts misunderstandings arising in communication between a deaf woman and a hearing man; and Fixed Point Observation [With My Father] in which Momose’s father gives oral responses to 173 questions written by the artist, only to find those responses starting to diverge from what he originally intended.
Momose’s title for her exhibition refers to the way an interpreter, in the role of intermediary, proceeds by taking a few words, and trying to imagine the feelings of the speaker, strings together words in another language. It also evokes the multiple layers that evolve within communication, for example the way a conversation can end up progressing in accordance with the interpreter’s misreading, and the speaker taking in the words of the interpreter. It also calls to mind how the voice goes beyond one’s own body and to and from another’s, in the manner that the blind female itako shamans of the Tohoku region serve as mediums (interpreters), or conduits for dialog between the spirits of the dead, and those who seek contact with them.
Interpreter offers the opportunity to turn your ear to some “voices” whose existence has been suppressed and denied.

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

A solo exhibition titled Generative Interface, devoted to the work of sculptor Nawa Kohei, is to be staged at the Towada Art Center, and the new Community Center (final name TBD, designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects) opening in Towada in September. The exhibition will run from, June 18 to November 20, 2022 at the Towada Art Center, and from October 1 to November 20, 2022 at the Community Center.

Through his unique concept of perceiving the world in terms of “cells” (both biological and/or particles), Nawa pursues new approaches to sculpture, spanning a variety of techniques, and materials, including glass and liquid. Presenting works from a range of series including the Esquisse drawings from the artist’s postgrad studies, the well-known PixCell sculptures, and his new White Code series, Generative Interface will show the development of Nawa’s practice over time, focusing on his expansion of the concept of sculpture through the exploration of materials.

By superimposing new images on phenomena unchanged since antiquity, it is possible to expand our interpretations of those phenomena to an infinite degree. For example, overlaying the contemporary image of “code” on the phenomenon of “intermittent rain” allows us to expand the meaning of that phenomenon. This exhibition deals with these marginal information domains that spill over from day-to-day understanding, and the expansion of sensation and imagination in response.

The title Generative Interface shows the concept underlying production of all Nawa Kohei’s works. In his PixCell series, where surfaces change form in filmic fashion with the shifting of perspectives caused by the lens effect; and Biomatrix (W) in which bubbles erupt in a grid pattern from silicon oil, constantly-shifting interfaces subtly stimulate the vision, sharpening the viewer’s sensibilities. Nawa’s concept focuses on the “skin as interface between matter and sensibility, against a background of the reality of perception and cognition in the digital era.

【 Nawa Kohei: Generative Interface　Trailer 】

Videography： Ishikawa Kazuya