Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) is delighted to announce that Fujii Hikaru and Yamashiro Chikako were selected as the winners for Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2020-2022 (TCAA), which is established by Tokyo Metropolitan Government and TOKAS in 2018 as a contemporary art award for mid-career artists whose work, produced outside Japan, deserves global recognition.
The two winners will receive two years of continuous support, including, in addition to funding for overseas activities, the opportunity to show their work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and the publication of a monograph that would make possible concrete provision of information about the artist.
Profile
Fujii Hikaru
Born in Tokyo in 1976. His practice is based on the notion that artistic production implies a close relationship with society and history. Mainly in the form of video installation, he creates work that responds to contemporary social issues through detailed research and fieldwork on unique cultures and histories of various countries and regions.
Yamashiro Chikako
Born in Okinawa in 1976. With the geopolitical situation and history of Okinawa, her native place, as her starting point, Yamashiro explores the voices, bodies, and souls of people left in East Asia while taking identity, the boundary between life and death, and changing memories of history as her theme, working in photography and video. She continues to address the latent potential of images and their possibilities for performativity.
Juries’ comments
Fujii Hikaru is selected for his highly developed methodologies of articulating historical events and unforgotten memories with the aesthetic quality of his video installation, which enable the audience to confront the present. Given his lucid articulation of his concepts, from an objective perspective, he has great potential to develop his work in and beyond Japan. His engagement with his proposed new work takes a subjective approach not present in his work thus far, addressing the past of the artist himself in postwar history. With the new developments through this approach, now is the right time to support his research and creative work with this award.
Yamashiro’s video work, an extension of her performances, is appreciated as a highly unique expression that addresses historical issues, through the artist’s body, from a perspective that internalizes the issues. She has discovered a new format for the bodily expression she has attempted thus far, one that expands its scale in creating works. Interaction with people in the arts in Japan and abroad will take her work a step up. While thus far she has mainly referred to war and colonialism in Okinawa, her home, she now approaches them as universally relevant issues. She is pushing herself to address topics beyond Okinawa. Given the timing, this award will be an excellent opportunity to support her development.
The international selection committee for TCAA 2020-2022
Doryun Chong (Deputy Director / Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+)
Kamiya Yukie (Gallery Director, Japan Society, New York)
Kondo Yuki (Program Director, Tokyo Arts and Space)
Maria Lind (Curator, Writer and Educator)
Carol Yinghua Lu (Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum)
Sumitomo Fumihiko (Director, Arts Maebashi / Associate Professor, Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts)
Contact
tcaa@tokyoartsandspace.jp
