Ei Arakawa-Nash: Paintings Are Popstars

This will be the first solo museum exhibition in Asia by Ei Arakawa-Nash, a Japanese American artist who has been at the forefront of renewing the visibility and advancement of performance art internationally since the 2000s. The exhibition, titled Ei Arakawa-Nash: Paintings Are Popstars, is a solo show by Arakawa-Nash, but the works of more than fifty musicians, painters, and others who collaborate with him will also appear in the national museum space. Each of the paintings and pieces of music will be worshiped as if it were a pop star with its own aberrant presence, and Arakawa-Nash will generate performances inspired by the attitudes of pop stars.

Ei Arakawa-Nash performing with works by Forrest Arakawa-Nash with Yuki Tanaka, Kerstin Brätsch with Hayata Ishikawa & Noboru Ishikawa, John Cale/Tony Conrad/Terry Riley, Masaya Chiba with Ayumu Murase, Leidy Churchman, Bruce Conner/Miles Davis/Jay Defeo, Maya Deren & Teiji Ito, Nicole Eisenman, Kim Gordon, Miho Hatori, HappiLife Channel, Celia Hollander, Karl Holmqvist, Miyoko Ito, Kosuke Kameda, Yuki Katsura, On Kawara, Jutta Koether, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Toshi Maruki (Toshiko Akamatsu) with Saho Terao, Henri Matisse with Yumi Matsutoya & Masataka Matsutoya, Shimon Minamikawa, Daishiro Mori with Ito Mori, Oscar Murillo with Piaopiao Gong-Yang/Yuki Ito/Siying Li/Jingwei Ou, Luis Nishizawa, Silke Otto-Knapp with Asahi Ishikawa/Ikumi Yang, Laura Owens, Gela Patashuri, Dan Poston, Seth Price, Reiji Saito, Trevor Shimizu, Amy Sillman with Marina Rosenfeld, Fujiko Shiraga,  Atsuko Tanaka, Theatre Company LGBTI Tokyo with Yuriko Kozumi/Pico (Takahiko Saito)/Mayu Takahashi, Reiko Tomii, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, UNITED BROTHERS, Yui Yaegashi, Jiro Yoshihara, 65+ volunteers and others. (List as of October 3)

Exhibition Highlights

Performances with paintings: This is the first solo exhibition of a performance artist at the National Art Center, Tokyo. The performances scheduled during the exhibition include Mad Garland, a communicative dance through paintings; Tabards for Ei, 50 wearable paintings; and Nemesis Painting, in which visitors are sucked into paintings.

Weekly artist-led tours: The design of these tours is: “Free to hop on and off. You can join and leave when you want.” The performance schedule is on the museum website. The English tour will be led by Forrest Arakawa-Nash, the artist’s husband and the founder of Contemporary Art Library.

Mega Please Draw Freely: In 2021, the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern first presented Arakawa-Nash’s Mega Please Draw Freely, a tribute to Jiro Yoshihara of the Gutai Art Association. The current iteration of this participatory installation, which will take place every Sunday during the exhibition’s run, allows anyone to draw freely on the floor of the museum. After the exhibition, this installation will travel to Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 2025.

Rare Painting Sightings: This includes drawings from 1964 by On Kawara that incorporate imagery of a newborn baby and homosexuality; a painting by Miyoko Ito, a Japanese American abstract painter who has gained wider recognition in recent years; Nicole Eisenman’s rarely seen portraits of her children; a new twin-stroller painting by Yui Yaegashi; Kerstin Brätsch’s seven Kite Paintings; new works by Oscar Murillo activated with the Japanese public; and a new 6-meter painting-structure by Shimon Minamikawa.

Music x Painting Projects: YUMING and Masataka Matsutoya inspired by Henri Matisse / Saho Terao inspired by Toshi Maruki (Toshiko Akamatsu) / Miho Hatori with Ei Arakawa-Nash inspired by David Medalla / Kim Gordon inspired by Yoko Ono

LED Painting Fantasies: The Japanese philosopher and writer Masaya Chiba’s first play script will be performed by four LED reproductions of paintings by Robert Rauschenberg. Their multiple voices will be provided by the chameleon-like voice actor Ayumu Murase. The exhibition will also feature LED reproductions of the 1950s Lower Manhattan queer scene that included artists Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, and Agnes Martin.

Film interpretations of performance and painting: Arakawa-Nash invited the artist Reiji Saito to film Arakawa-Nash’s performances for Saito’s own film pieces. Some performance locations are the National Art Center, Tokyo, in its Kisho Kurokawa–designed building; the Otsuka Museum of Art in Tokushima Prefecture; and Tokyo’s latest cultural and commercial development, Azabudai Hills. A newly restored 1967 video work by Bruce Conner, which features American painter Jay DeFeo’s 900 kg painting entitled The Rose (1958–66) and Miles Davis’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” (1960) will also be screened.

Birth Countdown! Using egg donation and surrogacy in California and Texas, US, Arakawa-Nash and his husband are expecting twins to be born on December 30, 2024. In the section of the exhibition titled “Painting & Parenting,” a countdown timer will be set up at the museum to announce on a national stage the arrival of babies for queer dads.

Admission is free, so please come as often as you like during the exhibition period.

Curated by Naoki Yoneda
With the assistance of Kosuke Kameda, Ayako Miyajima, Yukako Yamada, and Ritsu Yoshino
With the cooperation of Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo