EXHIBITION
Exhibition
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- Current
Collection Exhibition 1: Inner Cosmology
2021.6.15(Tue.) - 2021.11.3(Wed.)
In our day-to-day lives there are a great many things over which we have no power. In the face of this reality, by communicating their thoughts to a specific deity, or perhaps to spirits dwelling in nature, or by looking into their own hearts, since time immemorial people have immersed themselves in the vast cosmos beyond their reach alone, and gone about their lives hoping that this transcendent force will bring them reliable everyday blessings. And now as ever, various acts of prayer, religion, and reflection are part and parcel of our daily lives. One source of the arts, including fine art, music, and dance, also sat alongside these everyday acts. Art, which renders invisible worlds visible, served as a medium to guide people to the infinite universe. And though times change, as long as we continue to seek day-to-day peace in our lives, perhaps this role of art is also manifested in contemporary art, in a different form. “Inner Cosmology” attempts to unravel this aspect of contemporary art through the lens of religion, prayer and reflection (introspection), using mainly works from the Museum’s own collection. By giving visitors a glimpse into myriad cultures from around the world, through their different forms of religion, prayer, and reflection, we hope this exhibition will not only offer a new perspective on art today, but encourage greater understanding of the sheer diversity of religious culture.
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Countermeasures Against Awkward Discourses : From the Perspective of Third Wave Feminism
2021.10.16 (Sat.) -
2022.3.13 (Sun.) *Title and contents of the exhibition are subject to change.In this exhibition our guest curator, the artist NAGASHIMA Yurie, looks at works (including her own) produced by ten artists whose careers began in the 1990s, and offers fresh interpretations of these works from a feminist viewpoint. Nagashima has been producing photographic work and writing since her own art-scene debut in 1993, all the while harboring doubts about the “onnanoko shashin” (girl photography) label sweepingly applied to her and other female photographers of the same generation. Uneasy with the joking images of feminists propagated by the media in the 1980s, the young Nagashima declined to identify as a feminist herself, yet became a consistent challenger of male-centered values. Nagashima sees this kind of attitudee, which had the effect of rendering feminist practice among the younger generation virtually invisible, as one version of Japanese third wave feminism, and asserts that elements of it can also be found in the output of artists who declined to be part of any “movement” or pursuit of “solidarity.” This exhibition showcases works selected following dialogue between Nagashima and the nine other artists, based on this observation. We hope the diverse offerings in “Countermeasures Against Awkward Discourses,” will give viewers a taste of the great breadth of art practice that can emerge in response to the situations that confront us.
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FEMINISMS
2021.10.16 (Sat.) -
2022.3.13 (Sun.) *Title and contents of the exhibition are subject to change.Feminism in Japan from the 1990s onward was linked to popular culture, focused on girls and young women in Europe and the US, and was disseminated through the media. Young women’s activities in Japan were also featured in the media, particularly a brand of feminism that became known as the “Girly Movement.” However, in Japan’s case it cannot be denied that in some ways the movement was less a call for change than it was fodder for the media, turning images of women into objects for consumption. Laws such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1986 and the Basic Act for a Gender Equal Society of 1999 were passed and a gender-equal society seemed to be on the way, but in reality there remained a pervasive sense of incongruity between the individual and society, as seen in the marital and family systems, social norms of heterosexuality, and conventions of femininity and masculinity. Now, in the 2020s, social changes are stirring as small voices raising dissent connect through the Internet and gain strength. Feminism, which was thought of as only for women, is extending a helping hand to anyone who feels out of place in society. In recent years, the word has begun to be used in the plural form: feminisms. Ways of thinking about and understanding feminism differ depending on people’s generation and era, nation and ethnic group, environment and values. The message of pluralistic feminisms is the importance and necessity of members of society mutually acknowledging diverse ways of thinking. In this exhibition, works by nine artists, each with their own perspective, offer a window into expressions of feminism in Japan, and how artists perceive gender, the body, society, and what lies beyond.
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- Upcoming
Collection Exhibition 2: BLUE
2021.11.20(Sat.) - 2022.5.8(Sun.)
The striking feature shared by Leandro Erlich’s The Swimming Pool, James Turrell’s Blue Planet Sky, and L’Origine du monde by Anish Kapoor, all on permanent exhibit at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, is their brilliant blue coloring. Blue, color of sky and water, and rarely seen in natural objects, has stirred feelings of adoration and aspiration since antiquity. Blue is also the color that appears in the space between light and darkness, life and death. Focusing on the color blue in the Museum’s collection, and traversing genres from painting and sculpture to film and craft, “BLUE” will present a diverse selection of expression in the eponymous color by an equally diverse selection of contemporary artists of varying cultural backgrounds. Also on display will be a blue-saturated installation by painter and film artist Takashi Ishida, invited to participate on this occasion.
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Doug Aitken: i am in you
2021.4.29(Thu.) - 2021.11.23(Tue.)
This exhibition showcases Doug Aitken's i am in you, presented at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa for the first time since its acquisition. Doug Aitken is known for an incredibly diverse body of work ranging from video, photography, sculpture and architectural interventions, to sound, installation, and film offerings. i am in you is a 5-screen video installation. Amid everyday scenes of American suburbia, people, nature, manmade objects, and geometric designs overlap deftly with a young girl's whispering voice, hands clapping in rhythm, and a piano melody, drawing the viewer inexorably into the flow of hallucinatory images on the video. As these images repeat continuously, fragmenting without providing any firm narrative contours, the audience feels the power and speed of this elusive state of flux at a visceral level, experiencing the work as a wandering journey through a vortex of visuals and sound. This is a stunning opportunity to experience first-hand the dynamism of a Doug Aitken video installation in the spacious surroundings of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.
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Kodomochounaikai: playing, learning, connecting through design
2021.4.3(Sat.) - 2022.3.21(Mon.)
Kodomochounaikai Jimukyoku, established in 2014 by architect Shikichi Kaori, is an organization that assembles and runs workshop programs to cultivate the intelligence and sensitivity that enable children to identify issues and solve problems creatively, through design. Kodomochounaikai Jimukyoku provides supervision and support for the activities of children's design teams called called “Kodomochounaikai.” The design activities of these “Kodomochounaikai” ultimately coalesce in the form of a “festival” that connects them to the local community. The children who design the festival get to engage with many other children and, families, and local residents enjoying the festival, and interact with the many friendly adults providing support and watching overseeing their activities. Kodomochounaikai program festivals become places for children to experience a successful realization of ideas, and be part of society. As well as providing an overview of Kodomochounaikai activities since 2014, in a Kanazawa edition of the program, visitors to this exhibition will have the chance to experience the process of design education with children and local residents, and explore the possibilities of design, in the lead-up to a Kodomochounaikai “festival” in Kanazawa.
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- Upcoming
Aperto 15
TOMIYASU Yuma
2021.10.30(Sat.) - 2022.3.21(Mon.)
In Aperto 15, artist TOMIYASU Yuma will set up artificial paranormal phenomena in a deserted room, allowing visitors to experience that “a sign of presence” forming the line between fictive and real. What Tomiyasu describes through such non-scientific things is a consciousness that emerges beyond body tissue, manifesting when the spirit of artist and spectator infiltrate each other. Her installation in the shape of a room gives the viewer a sense of a real, albeit invisible presence. The gallery space becomes a real dwelling place inhabited by the phantoms of those absent; projecting the presence of matter like a dream potentially perceived via a special, affinitive relationship between artist and spectator, instead of a hostile one mediated by the work.
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