死んだら終わりですというのが、なんだか心のどこかで引っかかるキーワードになりそうで、何がなんだかまだ分からないのだけどふつふつと気になってきている。言い換えるならば、「死なない限り終わらない」「死ぬまで終わらない」「死ぬまで終われない」「死ぬまで続く」となるだろうか。そう考えてみると、現在多くの国や地域でなされている職業選択の自由のことも同時に思い出す。選択の自由というのは、選択しなければいけない義務であって、それは多くの場合近代化における必要不可欠な要求と要素だったのだろうけれど、自由のその裏側には常に自己決定の義務が加課せられていて、多くの場合は死ぬまで人生の逐一の場面で大小問わず決定を下さないといけないのだ。なーんてことを考えながら、トロントでの展覧会のポストカードのデザインが届きましたので、告知文章と併せてお知らせさせて頂きます。
THE ARTS OF TOGETHERNESS
July 11 - August 23, 2009
Gendai Gallery at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
Opening: Saturday, July 11, 12 -6 pm (during Natsu-matsuri)
Featuring artists Sandee Moore and Yoshinori Niwa
Guest-curated by Milena Placentile
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 12 – 5 p.m.
http://gendaigallery.org/
Gendai Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition guest-curated by Milena Placentile that brings together Winnipeg-based artist Sandee Moore and Tokyo-based artist Yoshinori Niwa in an imaginative and participatory exploration of traditional Japanese cultural activities.
The Arts of Togetherness is a multifaceted exhibition that gently challenges commonly held assumptions about contemporary art as a cultural practice. Working in collaboration with her chosen artists, guest curator Milena Placentile, offers a project that seeks to bridge differences in familiarity with contemporary art by encouraging audiences of all ages to contemplate different points of view concerning what qualifies as the expression of a community, and what is pertinent to definitions of cultural life.
The artists featured in this exhibition, Sandee Moore and Yoshinori Niwa, will transpose popular traditional and modern Japanese cultural activities such as sentō (traditional bathhouses) and kite-flying, into new contexts in order to explore notions of interpersonal exchange and community, memory and imagination, and the passage of ideas over time.
Sandee Moore - Yutopia
A warm, personal spirit characterizes Moore’s artworks. Many of her project are service-oriented and she is especially interested in framing interactive experiences as a way to help build and strengthen interpersonal relationships. A recurring theme in her work concerns the complex nature of interpersonal communication and the barriers that challenge opportunities for closeness.
While researching traditional bathhouses in Eastern Tokyo is 2004, Moore was charmed by the name of one bathhouse in particular, “Yutopia”. This clever turn of phrase relates the pleasure of the hot bath water (yuu) to the perfect place (utopia). First developed during her artist residency at Tokyo’s Mukojima Rice+, Moore’s newly conceived online Yutopia is a synthesis of Japanese bathhouses and simulates the unique model for social interaction that takes place within them. Moore describes bathhouses as a form of “heterotopia”, that is, a culturally definable space that is unlike any other, yet acts as microcosm in that it reflects larger cultural patterns and social orders. What is unique about bathhouses is that there is a lack of pretension and social hierarchy within them because people are naked and thus evidence of economic status and/or occupation are not present.
This installation of Yutopia seeks to present an environment that signals a Japanese bathhouse for the purpose of encouraging various forms of interaction.
Yoshinori Niwa – Kite Flying with Local People
Yoshinori Niwa is interested in exploring how people interact and does so by investigating activities that reveal cultural similarities, eradicate social barriers, and question what constitutes anticipated behavior in various circumstances. The very process of thinking about old things in new ways, and giving activities alternate structures, has the capacity to shed light on the key purpose of many cultural practices: to form emotional and intellectual bonds and to demonstrate unity.
Buddhist monks brought kites to Japan in approximately the 7th century, at which time their shapes began to take on forms representative of cranes, dragons, and/or fish in order to symbolize positive fortunes such as prosperity or fertility. Accordingly, kites were used frequently to avert evil spirits and to ensure bountiful rich harvests. Initially, only the samurai class was allowed to fly kites, but during the Edo government, citizens rejected the notion that it distracted them from their work, which made the activity more commonplace. Today, complex and beautiful kites are flown at any time, but are especially popular to enjoy on Children’s Day (May 5) or during New Year celebrations as offerings of thanks for past successes.
Kite Flying with Local People seeks not only to invite participants to become involved in making and flying kites with the artist in proximity to the JCCC grounds, but it also invites them to invest each kite with a personal element such as their own used clothing, or other materials they choose to find and bring to the gallery. In the case of kites made out of found materials considered refuse (i.e. plastic shopping bags), Niwa encourages participants to think of the potential use in any object. This activity not only reminds individuals about the finite number of resources on the planet, but also encourages them to think creatively about how our resources are used to their maximum potential.
Performance
On the opening day of The Arts of Togetherness, Niwa will work with visitors to create kites and will, later that afternoon, fly them all at once in gesture that will be celebratory while, at the same time, presenting a visual impression of unity through the single presentation of many kites produced by many individuals.
Niwa will take video and still photography of these activities to document the kites, workshops, and his performance of the kites being flown. The footage will be edited and presented within the exhibition environment together with a selection of raw materials finished kites, and drawings.
Three-week Residency
During his three-week residency, Niwa will conduct various performances and workshops at the JCCC, as well as in downtown Toronto thanks to a partnership with FADO Performance Inc. The ephemera created through the course of these activities will be presented in the gallery.
To participate in Niwa’s workshops, please contact info@gendaigallery.org or call 416-419-7492 for more information.
About the Artists and Guest Curator
Sandee Moore proposes to animate social relationships through personal exchange via artwork in media such as performance, video, installation, and interactive electronic sculpture. Since graduating from the MFA program at the University of Regina in 2003, Moore has screened and exhibited across Canada at venues including the Edmonton Art Gallery (now the Art Gallery of Alberta), The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Images Film and Video Festival, Blackwood Gallery, Dalhousie Art Gallery, and Mendel Art Gallery. Her practice has also taken her to Japan, where she was the 2004 Mukojima/Rice+ artist-in-residence. She was recently commissioned to create a video for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, stills of which were featured in the art pages of issue 100 of Border Crossings magazine. She recently stepped down from her four-year term as Director of Video Pool Media Arts Centre in Winnipeg in order to pursue her art practice on a full-time basis.
sandeemoore.com
Yoshinori Niwa is a physical performance artist who often incorporates animals, plants, and the environment into his work. Niwa’s aim is to explore how to live with others, especially those with different life experience (ethno-cultural, economic, etc). Some of his performances are site-specific, however is especially interested in how performances change from venue to venue and between audiences, so he is well attuned to responding to that which is around him. Niwa is a graduate of the Tama Art University Department of Moving Images and Performing Arts (Tokyo) and he has performed in Britain, Canada, China, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia. He has also undertaken artistic residences through VENT Live Art (Oxford, UK), The Asahi Shimbun Foundation (Japan), and Tou Scene (Norway). In addition to his performance work, Niwa is active as a cultural producer in Japan and he has collaborated on a range of events and projects including the 2006 Tokyo-San Francisco Arts Festival. In 2007, he coordinated an international art festival titled “Artist as Activist,” which took place in Tokyo.
niwa-staff.org
Milena Placentile is a curator, writer, and consultant based in Winnipeg. Over the years, she has worked with various organizations including Video Pool Media Arts Centre (Winnipeg), SMART Project Space (Amsterdam), the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), and A Space Gallery (Toronto). She is currently affiliated with the University of Winnipeg’s Gallery 1C03. Holding a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto, Placentile continues to investigate audience-centered curatorial practices and socially engaged cultural policy. She is a member of IKT and she has received generous support from organizations including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Winnipeg and Manitoba Arts Councils, the International Association of Art Critics (Armenia), the Consulate General of France in Toronto, and the Henry Moore Foundation. In addition to commissioned critical responses, Placentile has also written for FUSE, BorderCrossings, and MUSE. Her recent exhibitions include Trust Us, We’re Artists (Toronto, 2006), Rehab: Weaning Youth Arts off Corporate Crack (Toronto, 2007), and No Time to Lose (Aberdeen, 2008).
About Gendai Gallery
Gendai Gallery’s mission is to promote excellence in primarily contemporary art & design with a curatorial emphasis on the work by Canadian & International artists of Japanese ancestry and of the larger Asian Community. Situated within Toronto’s Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Gendai Gallery is interested in art in the context of culture and community — local and global — and an ongoing interrogation of these elements. Gendai Gallery is committed to a multi-disciplinary program encompassing visual art, design, performing arts, and literature. Since its inaugural exhibition in 2000, Gendai Gallery has been steadily developing its programs. The gallery’s programs are made possible through the efforts of a volunteer Board of Directors. The Gallery also relies on volunteer advisors from the arts community to help carry out its mission.
This exhibition is generously supported by:
The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, FADO Performance Inc., and Tani Miki
MEDIA CONTACT: Maiko Tanaka 416-520-2855 | info@gendaigallery.org
WORKSHOP CONTACT: Siya Chen 416-419-7492
IMAGES:
Yutopia (detail), courtesy of Sandee Moore.
Kite-Flying with Local People (documentation of performance, Düsseldorf, 2006), courtesy of Yoshinori Niwa.
