18.10 – 30.10.22 |Aesthetics of the Periphery | Tsukuba Museum of Art | curated by Takashi Ikezawa.

After a few tedious days of completion, the exhibition was finally opened with a wonderful performance. My two main works were produced in Japan and Austria and premiered here at the Tsukuba Museum of Art, organized by the Tsukuba Art Center. Beside these two sculptures three black and white photographies of my former residencies in Estonia and Finland were shown beside four digital prints from Japan.

うかれ燕 – Ukare Tsubame

Ukare tsubame is an old song about a swiftlet, I heard when searching for old washi paper at a flea market. Since then the lyrics are stuck in my head. The figure therefor is made of the buddhistic lotus sutras from Meiji era, I found at the day. The wooden grid above is an old door from my house in Onishi/ Gunma and over 90 years old. 
Floating with no wings the body is bound to the sky by long cords made from an old haiku book. Circling around the longing of beloved humans and nature, those haikus were written originally by a group of five people. Learning about these beautiful lyrics I wanted to reuse them for a poetic journey through time. 

蚤の市で古い和紙を探しているときに耳にした古い歌「うかれつばめ」。それ以来、歌詞が頭にこびりついています。フィギュアは、当日見つけた明治時代の蓮の経典で作りました。上の格子状の木は、群馬県尾西市の自宅にあった90年以上前の古いドアです。
翼を失った体は、古い俳句集から作られた長い紐で空に縛られている。この俳句は、もともと5人のグループによって書かれたもので、愛する人と自然への憧れをテーマにしています。この美しい歌詞を知り、時を超えた詩的な旅に再利用したいと思いました。

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タイムリープ – Taimurīpu :: (Timeleap)

The shelf of body consists of debt lists from an old general store in Gunma prefecture, where I have my studio. The papers are from Meiji era and tell about the items people have bought in the store and would pay by the end of the month. The inside of the body I filled with shredded papers from a modern banking institute. 
Hanging from the body are multiple worn out scarfs which are made from business papers from the same general store dating over 130 years back. The artwork is going through time and keeps track of all these peoples business. Although these people don’t live anymore, their monetary records draw a trace through time.

本体の棚は、私のアトリエがある群馬県の古い雑貨屋さんの借金帳で構成されています。明治時代のもので、その店で買った品物を月末までに支払うという内容です。ボディーの内側には、現代の銀行で使われたシュレッダー付きの紙を入れました。
身体からぶら下がっているのは、130年以上前に同じ雑貨屋で買ったビジネスペーパーから作られた、使い古された複数のスカーフです。この作品は、時を越えて、この人たちの商売の記録を残しているのです。 この人たちはもう生きてはいないが、その金銭的な記録は時代を超えて痕跡を残している。

7.10-11.11.22 | Minoritenkloster Tulln | From 1,225 works submitted by 553 artists, 68 works by 30 artists were selected. At the vernissage in the atrium of the Minorite Monastery, more than 300 visitors came to view the excitingly curated exhibition with great interest and to attend the award ceremony with laudatory applause.

Artists of the exhibition SCHIELE AWARD 2022: Bella Angora, Isabel Belherdis, Maria Bichler, Katrin Bruder, Daniel Domig, Julia Dorninger, Kristina Feldhammer, Karin Frank, Anne Gassner, Olga Georgieva, Theresa Grandits, Birgit Graschopf, Anita Gratzer, Margit Greinöcker, Lisa Großkopf, Rika Fuentes Martinez, Jochen Höller, Udo Hohenberger, Bernadette Huber, Sebastian Kaltenbrunner, Maria Kuzyk, Bianca Lugmayr, Sissa Micheli, Florian Nitsch, Thomas Riess, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Andrea Schnell, Maria Temnitschka, Sophie Tiller und Christina Starzer.

19.8-18.9.22 | Savonlinna Museum | Water is essential for the survival of all living things. Water affects health, economy, environment. Good water quality and potable water is something most of us take for granted. However, access to potable water is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Securing clean water and nature for future generations is not a given.

With: Piela Auvinen, Anita Gratzer, Sami Funke, Henrik Härkönen, Marja de Jong, Kaisa Huotari, Andreas Kopp, Mikko Kallio, Laura Kärki, Juha Lahtinen, Vili Nissinen, Anna Pekkala, Jan Pohribný, Yuichiro Sato, Anna Siiriäinen, Julio Tubal ja Kimmo Ylönen.

Variations of an oneironautic sojourn |

23.3.-26.3.21 | Serlachius Foundation | with Yasushi Koyama | To sort out my countless thoughts and ideas, the remote residency at the Serlachius Foundation in Mänttä, Finland proves to be the ideal place for me. Here I can develop garments sufficiently stable for the use in performances, and find time to try out new materials and construction methods. Creating the right solutions so that the pieces can withstand the expected demands to be frequent folded and remain flexible, I use the methods of Oneironautic. As I am not trained in the logic of engineering, the tried and tested method of lucid dreaming, a special state of consciousness, helps me to master the obstacles that lie ahead. At the show at the Serlachius residency I present some methods for movement and shelter based on my latest drafts I did this winter. Furthermore some of the exhibited garments serve as templates and prototypes for my upcoming project in Japan, called Pina-Odori. My three month exile in Finland is the first time I can solemnly focus on the creation of wearable sculptures dedicated for a stage. In this sense, my residency here forms also the artistic basis for my overdue reunion with friends and my home in Japan after nearly two years of absence.

1-23.10.21 | Maxxi Museo Nazionale Roma |

The exhibition is organised as the 10th anniversary of the Swatch Peace Art Hotel and curated together with Hou Hanru, the artistic director of the Maxxi Museum in Rome. The opening happened to be on the same night with Sebastio Salgado’s show Amazonia.

Information about work 1 | work 2

March 2021 | Finally we could set up six of my paper works which will be presented at the Biennale in Schio, Vicenza in a couple of weeks. It was an easy ride to Italy and a very warm welcome at the Palazzo Fogazzaro.

Next to some of my garments you see the marble sculpture “The Weaver” by Antonio Tantardini from 1870. The figure of a young woman with a shuttle in her right hand has the intention of celebrating the ancient art of weaving, since the Fogazzaro family were textile industrialists. The female marble bust pictures Margherita of Savoy, Queen of Italy.

I am quite excited for the show as it is the first time that my works of such different residencies as Switzerland, China, Finland and Japan are shown together.

17-21.2.21 | Serlachius Foundation | The two month residency in Finnland was quite successful with an exhibition and feature in the newspaper. My working conditions in the studio were near perfect and the footage in the local thrift stores turned out amazing. Only the cold temperatures with mostly minus 20 degrees became a challenge to my daily commute by bike.

In my constructional garments I try to define the space of intimacy and the margin of distance to express a self-consciousness without being exploited. The title of the exhibition “The Distance of Faith” is supposed to describe a new understanding of the embodiness of our own space. In current times we are manoeuvred in that experience by different believes of science and faith. For sure we learned recently a new measurement of intimacy and privateness. I like to address this new space of self-awareness by my garments and wearable objects. For some reasons Finnland is quite an interesting place to research this kind of personal distance. Traditional cultural behaviour may be one reason that the people here connect much better with the new indicated rules of personal distance. As they cope well with a scientific approach to handle isolation rather than flee in certain patterns of conspirational belief. Part of handling this moment may be rooted in their own mythology “Kalevala” which has shaped Finnish culture and the national feeling in ways that should not be underestimated. The Kalevala differs from other saga cycles that it focuses on the common people and its heroes are distinguished mostly by knowledge and the art of singing. In that sense I try to reflect parts of the local identity in my artistic approach to reflect the Finnish embodiment of the personal space.