Program Period

Partner Institution – Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts [KdMoFA] (Taiwan)

Referrer

Che Kyongfa (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

Selection

[Japan-based Artist]
Among the Japanese candidates selected by the ARCUS Project Administration Committee and Che Kyongfa, the referrer, the KdMoFA has selected two artists for this program.

[Taiwan-based Curator]
The curator was recommended by Hospitalfield, the partner institution.

Reason for Nomination

In his recent works, Isomura has taken up the religious outlook of good and evil inherent in Thai contemporary religious art and also the issues surrounding asylum seekers residing in Japan. In a kitchified and humorous manner, he sheds a critical light on the border between “this side” and “that side” that lies so deep within our gaze. What allows Isomura’s subtle distancing and communication with the object of his confrontation may be Isomura’s particular gaze―a gaze that allows him to see himself and Japanese society objectively. In the current landscape where, on the one hand, boundaries and categories of all things are ambiguous yet, on the other hand, seem to intensify so excessively, it is exciting to see how Isomura, who treats issues with a unique eye, develops his practice in Taiwan. (Che Kyongfa)

Artist Statement

During my stay at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts, I aimed to conduct research on LGBTQ history in Taiwan as well as religious forms of expression that have continued to change and update until the present.

Though Taiwan and my own country of Japan have many things in common and have influenced each other in a variety of ways, I was interested in the large disparity that exists between them whereby Taiwan became the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage while Japan has still to make any legislative advances in the rights of sexual minorities, and starting from this I attempted to search for points of divergence. The greatest yield during my residency was gaining opportunities to visit various people and places such as a curator who planned the first LGBTQ-themed exhibition at an Asian national art museum, a mausoleum venerating a god who serves as a guardian for LGBTQ people, members of the gay community who participated in the Sunflower Student Movement, and the organizer of Taipei’s largest gay club event.

In terms of religious expression that has continued to develop and update (in particular, by the masses), this is not an interest confined to Taiwan but actually something that concerns me whenever visiting somewhere, since I believe that it is often possible to see in such forms of expression reflections of what a society is really like in each period of history without the interference of authority. In zhizha, the paper used as an offering to the dead at Taoist funerals, however, my interest shifted toward the relationship between the dead, for whom time has stopped, and an offering that is constantly updated, and even after returning to Japan I have continued to produce work in my practice influenced by the concept of zhizha.

Reason for Nomination

With “listening” as his starting point, mamoru has been presenting video works and lecture performances that deal with particular spaces and times. Recently, he has continued to conduct research on historical incidents and figures and, despite not being able to be literally see or know them, he investigates ways to recall or imagine them using abstract and poetic texts and physical movements. Viewers get to read the images and narratives from these fragments, but these works by mamoru, in fact, question knowledge and what it means “to know.”
Through his research of a 17th-century publication, mamoru has explored connections between the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Japan. It is interesting to see how his research will evolve during his residency in Taiwan. (Che Kyongfa)

Artist Statement

For this Exchange Residency Program, I was able to see significant results in relation to the artistic research project I have carried out called a long listening journey of a Possible thiStory especially of Japanese & Dutch & something more. At the base of this research is Atlas Japannensis, published in the Netherlands in the 17th century and featuring numerous illustrations introducing Japan, and the unknown past of Indonesia and Taiwan where the histories of the Netherlands and Japan intersect. This time I did fieldwork and a shoot at Fort Zeelandia, located in the present-day district of Anping in Tainan, Taiwan, and built by the Dutch East India Company around the 17th century in the south of what was then known as Formosa. During my stay, I edited my footage and put it together with footage I had already shot in Indonesia and Japan, and then presented it at the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in February 2018. (Screenings are also planned for Hong Kong in March 2019, Vienna in April 2019, and Taiwan in July 2019.) Incorporating my research on the suona, a traditional Taiwanese instrument that I encountered during my stay and developed an interest in, and the results of this as essential components of the lecture performance I had already planned, for my presentation at Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions I was also able to invite a suona musician whom I had met during my residency.

Curator Statement

When we’re facing the history of colonization, how could we reveal the scar of our ancestors, and conceive the scar which used to exist? Although ideology is inevasible, artists try to recall the emotional family and local history to rebuild a possible observation of path and the following production, as to find out the past and imagine future.

There’s a Japanese artist, Haruko Sasakawa, who organized and participated in an exhibition SENSOU-GA STUDIES）at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. I saw the way that how she dealt with the history and emphasized the gap of it, which interested me a lot. During my residency, ARCUS Project arranged me to visit her studio as to understand more about her contexts. While I got to know Sasakawa better, I understood that not only did she dealt with the history, but she also went back to the place where her grandfather served military service and reconstructed his experience in wartime from her perspective.

How can we present the subjectivity of art when Asia experienced multiple colonization? How could creators deal with these history-narrative paths? Multiple colonization of modern history of East Asia connects the fate of each other in the 20th century. What I was continuously observing and thinking during my residency was that how creators would re-demonstrate and look at the history, and how they could develop artworks when they look at the history.