<Related Exhibition>MOT ANNUAL 2024 on the imagined terrain
Dec 14, 2024 - Mar 30, 2025
Participating artists: Yuki Shimizu
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO
Related Exhibitions
©Yuki Shimizu
Participating artists: Yuki Shimizu
MOT ANNUAL 2024 on the imagined terrain
Yuki Shimizu / Satoshi Kawata / Ryohei Usui / Asami Shoji
December 14, 2024 - March 30, 2025
10AM – 6PM
Closed: Mondays (except 13 Jan and 24 Feb), New Year’s Holidays (from 28 Dec to 1 Jan 2025), 14 Jan and 25 Feb
Place: MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO
In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain a sense of being “here and now”. With the development of communication technologies and transportation, we are constantly exposed to an overwhelming amount of information and can easily move anywhere, amplifying this challenge. In such a world, re-examining what forms the terrain around us and where it connects can help to bring awareness to the space our bodies occupy and serve as a means to explore the direction we ought to take.
The term “shima / しま / 島,” meaning “island” in Japanese, appears in the Japanese version of the exhibition subtitle “こうふくのしま” and reflects the intention to redefine the geographical conditions of Japan, a nation composed of islands, where the four featured artists live. It speculates on this archipelago in the northwestern Pacific, not as an “isolated terrain” floating in the ocean, separated from other lands, but as part of an “open terrain”, an uplifted land surface that emerged at sea through tectonic movements and is connected to other continents and islands at the ocean’s depth. This alternative perspective, which searches for and finds invisible connections beneath the water, makes us look beyond conventional frameworks and boundaries, allowing us to imagine a world where everything is inextricably interconnected.
The works of the artists in this exhibition are also open to broader contexts and relationships, starting with the terrain around them. Through their respective approaches, they capture and depict the world, confronting the multiplicity and complexity of both their surroundings and their own selves. Their works function as devices that encourage viewers to actively find meaning through their individual perspectives, sensations, and experiences, transcending the artists’ interpretations and intentions and thus fostering diverse ways of seeing and feeling.
After World War II, the Japanese people rebuilt from the ruins and embarked on a path towards happiness and prosperity, driven by capitalistic and materialistic development. However, since the 1990s, Japan has found itself in a persistent state of economic stagnation and decline. Within these linear narratives, the conflicts and ambivalent struggles arising from multiple intertwined factors are often overlooked and left unresolved. Consequently, this exhibition addresses the challenge of engaging with the complexity of an entangled world, alongside artists who revisit the myriad things and situations surrounding them, giving them form through individual perspectives and artistic practices.
from
https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/exhibitions/mot-annual-2024/