Routes/Roots

Ever since it first opened in 2001, Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) has continued to collaborate with international artists, curators, arts centers, and cultural organizations to produce exhibitions and pioneer related programs. TOKAS Project, which began in 2018, aims to shine a contemplative light on the arts, society, and various other themes from a multicultural perspective. In its fourth year, the project presents works by artists based in Germany, to commemorate both ten years of exchange between TOKAS and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and 160 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Japan.

Compared to other major cities of the world, Berlin’s social structure makes it easy for artists to live and for creative communities to form, and creators from all over the world have gathered to live and work in the city. Sugito Yoshie, Takeda Tatsuma, and Yoshida Shingo, whose works are featured in this exhibition, have also lived in Berlin for several years and have been producing works with multifaceted perspectives on Europe’s unique history and diversity while adapting to a different linguistic and cultural environment. They participated in the TOKAS Residency Program for Japanese artists in Germany, exhibited their works at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and each of them deepened their knowledge and insight through activities and interactions that leverage the networks they have cultivated thus far. As it happens, this year all three artists have elected to leave Berlin temporarily, for different reasons, and have begun living and working in new places that are also removed from their places of origin.

This exhibition features works with themes related to legends, traditions, and cultures that draw the artists’ interest. Also, video works capturing Japan from distinctive perspectives, by past participants in the Tokyo TOKAS Residency, Martin Ebner, Joachim Fleischer and Stefanie Gaus, who are currently based in Germany, will be screened.

When people relocate, we plan routes to reach our destinations, put down roots, and leave vestiges of ourselves there. Then, we plan routes to our next destinations and take flight once more. The works in this exhibition reveal something like layers of soil formed through slow accumulation over the course of long journeys, and the cultural fruits that grow up from this soil.

Artists
Sugito Yoshie: Sugito presents an installation with the motifs of coffee-grounds reading, a traditional form of Middle Eastern fortune-telling, and pajamas, incorporated as a device for switching back and forth between subject and object.

Takeda Tatsuma: In his work, Takeda interprets the concept of “media” in terms of the old-fashioned “mediums” of classical analog art forms such as painting and sculpture, and seeks to explore beauty as a common language. In this exhibition he presents the Skin Deep Beauty series, inspired by medieval European still life paintings of vegetation.

Yoshida Shingo: Being interested in micro-societies of various parts of the world, Yoshida creates video works with themes including myths from diverse regions, humans’ actions toward nature, and human powerlessness. Here, he primarily presents a video work based on a legend handed down over generations in a small village on the border between France and Spain.

Video screening
Video works by the artists who participated in the TOKAS Residency Programs in the past will be screened. Most of the videos are created in Japan with their unique viewpoints, that describe what we even didn’t recognize while living in this country.

Martin Ebner: Untitled (Tokyo); Drop Car
Joachim Fleischer: Slow Light – Scanning Tokio; White Eats Black, etc.
Stefanie Gaus: Ogata-mura – A model farming village; Beyond Metabolism

Organizer: Tokyo Arts and Space (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
Support: The German Embassy in Tokyo, Goethe-Institut Tokyo