Hitoshi Ushijima & Hiraki Sawa: With a Landscape｜21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Information

Period:

2026.9.8(Tue.) - 2027.4.18(Sun.)
10:00-18:00 (until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays untill 17:00 on January 2-3)

Venue:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Long-term Project Room, Project Room

Admission:

Free

Closed:

Mondays (except September 21, October 12, October 26, November 23, January 11, March 22), September 24, October 13, October 27, November 24, December 29- January 1, January 12, March 23

For More Information:

Contact

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the Noto region through a wide range of activities. Since the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, the museum has continued its efforts to support recovery through art.
This exhibition presents the work of Hitoshi Ushijima and Hiraki Sawa, two artists who have participated in the Oku-Noto Triennale and who have close ties to the museum.
Ushijima relocates and reconfigures the outdoor sculpture Matsukumo, Umikaze, Hashikekumo (Pine trees, clouds, sea breeze and buoyant barge clouds), which was damaged in a landslide caused by the earthquake, exploring how a work can change as it enters into new relationships. Sawa, through a video installation based on his research in Suzu, considers bonds between people and the land and the various forms those bonds take. In different ways, the two artists seek to reconnect place and people, memory and landscape, past and future. Their perspectives open onto a universal question: how do we, who live with the reality of natural disasters, restore our relationships with others and with the world?
We hope this exhibition will offer an occasion to reflect on what it means to live “with a landscape,” in ways that extend beyond our own particular places and times, and to contemplate our own connections with the world.

About the Exhibited Works

Hitoshi Ushijima,
Concept sketch for a new work, 2026

Hitoshi Ushijima

Matsukumo, Umikaze, Hashikekumo (Pine trees, clouds, sea breeze and buoyant barge clouds), shown at the Oku-Noto Triennale 2023, consists of an orange column with stairs and a green structure evoking clouds or a ship, and was built for viewers to climb and play on. After the work collapsed in a landslide caused by the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake and was slated for demolition, it was transported to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, to be reconfigured in a form that differs from its presentation at the Triennale. The exhibition explores what new landscapes the work might bring forth in its new setting.
Hiraki Sawa,
Concept image for Kuro and Shiro, 2026

Hiraki Sawa

Sawa presents a new moving image installation that grew out of his research in Suzu, in the Oku-Noto region, where his grandparents and father lived and with which he has maintained close ties, as well as conversations with local residents. The artist closely observes life and memory in a region shaped by the sea and mountains, its accumulated layers of time, and the values nurtured over generations, and from these he develops a single mythic narrative. Drawing on the primal bond between land and people and the distinctive sense of time that endures there, the work reflects on what it means to live within a local environment.

Exhibiting Artists

Photo:Kanae Ohgi

Hitoshi Ushijima

Statement
My work, damaged in the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, could not be rebuilt and was slated for dismantling. Given conditions in the disaster area, I believe that decision was unavoidable. I decided to take possession of the work myself rather than see it dismantled and discarded. It is a monumental work, and even having reclaimed it, I currently have no prospect of a place to exhibit it. Even so, I could not stand by and let this work, which had retained its form despite collapsing in a landslide triggered by the earthquake, simply be thrown away. What should I do with it once it is in my care? And how should a work made specifically for that site, Otani in Suzu City, be treated in another location?

Profile
Ushijima was born in 1963 in Fukuoka Prefecture, where he lives and works. After studying under dancer and choreographer Min Tanaka in the 1980s, he toured Europe as a performer. After returning to Japan, he began exhibiting works in the form of playground equipment that he referred to as sculpture while helping with his family’s playground equipment manufacturing business. Many of his works come into being not simply by being viewed, but through the experiences and participation of viewers. As people handle, move, and alter them, the works take on different functions and meanings at each site they inhabit. He has also proposed and led numerous workshop programs, including radio stations and projects in which participants build forts or hideouts.
Recent exhibitions include the 1st Songshan Lake Biennale (2025, China), the Manda Pit Art Festival (2023, Kumamoto), the Oku-Noto Triennale (2023, Ishikawa), OpenArt (2017, Sweden), and Without Waiting for the Wind: Practices of Satoshi Murakami, Hitoshi Ushijima, and Kyohei Sakaguchi at Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto (2017, Kumamoto).
Photo: DARUMA

Hiraki Sawa

Statement
In the belief that when a reality far beyond our imagining suddenly appears before us, we need a myth in order to accept it, I decided to create a myth for Hiki, in Suzu, where my father lives.
A gray heron stands alone and silent on a riverside path in the moonlight. The heron knows that the earth here has in fact been vibrating slowly and continuously since ancient times, and knows of a hole that has opened. I created a pair of glasses through which to see what might still be rooted in this land 100 years from now.

Profile
Born in 1977 in Ishikawa Prefecture, Sawa completed an MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London in 2003. He lives and works in London and Kanazawa. He creates temporal and spatial installations combining moving images, sculpture, and two-dimensional works, giving form to a distinctive artistic vision. Oscillating between the sphere of his own memory and that of others, he brings particular subjects into focus, producing a body of work that conveys ephemerality and nostalgia imbued with a sense of universality.
Recent exhibitions include Parallel Memory at the Museo Universidad de Navarra (2019, Spain) and Hiraki Sawa: Latent Image Revealed at KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre (2018, Yokohama). He has shown work extensively in Japan and abroad, including at the Taipei Biennial (2025, Taiwan) and the Oku-Noto Triennale (2023, 2021, and 2017, Ishikawa).