Waiting for the Wind Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2021-2023 Exhibition
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) established the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA) in 2018 as a contemporary art prize to encourage mid-career artists to make new breakthroughs in their work by providing them with several year of continuous support.
An award exhibition will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo featuring Shiga Lieko and Takeuchi Kota, the winners of the third edition of TCAA for 2021-2023.
This exhibition featuring Shiga Lieko and Takeuchi Kota, winners of the third TCAA, is titled Waiting for the Wind. This term emerged from dialogue between Shiga and Takeuchi that began at the award ceremony, and could be described as the only collaboration between the two artists featured in the exhibition, as well as an invocation of inner realms of the human experience.
Shiga reinterprets a colossal wave of restoration projects in diverse fields, which suddenly began after the March 2011 disaster, in terms of the basic human activity of walking, while Takeuchi presents new work based on his historical research into balloon bombs (a weapon used during World War II), conveying a “chain of possession” connecting past events, artists, and viewers. The works of these two artists, who are based in Miyagi and Fukushima―both of which suffered devastating and lasting damage in the Great East Japan Earthquake―take different creative directions, but they share a common understanding found through dialogue, and the exhibition layout is such that their works interact and resonate in some parts of the venue.
To download the exhibition handout, please click here.
＊Subject to alteration according to the state of the COVID-19 infection.
Visitors guideline is available here.
SHIGA Lieko
Born in Aichi in 1980. Lives and works in Miyagi.
Shiga moved to Miyagi in 2008, and while getting to know the people of the region, she created works dealing with subjects such as the relationship between human society and nature, perspectives on life through the lens of imagined death, and memories that go back countless generations. The way society ceased to function after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and experiences governed by the harsh laws of nature, led to her being overwhelmed by déjà vu-like echoes of Japan’s reconstruction following World War II, and she has subsequently pursued the primal roots of the human spirit through a range of artistic endeavors.
Still from Bipolar, 2022
Still from Bipolar, 2022
Still from Bipolar, 2022
Still from Bipolar, 2022
TAKEUCHI Kota
Born in 1982. Lives and works in Fukushima.
Takeuchi develops his practice across temporal and spatial divides, focusing on the themes of parallel bodies and possession. Engaging with people’s memories through buildings, monuments, sculptures, archives, and interviews with local historians and eyewitnesses, he explores the relationship between media and human beings from multiple perspectives using means such as maps, live streaming video, and UAV (drone) cameras.
Artist Statement
Last year, using Google Maps and American military archives, I was able to identify one of the landing sites of the “balloon bombs” that Japan released to target the US during World War II. With travel support from TCAA I visited that location, which is near the Hanford Site (once the site of a plutonium production reactor; now a center for scientific research and development) in Washington State. In September 2022, I worked with museums in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, one of the places from which balloons were released, to organize a walk for residents to explore history. Daily news reports show that while humanity has developed means of instantaneous communication across oceans, we have not stopped sending soldiers and bombs across borders. I am now working on drawings while envisioning the ground over which the balloons once flew.
Sigh of A Ground, 2022, installation Photo: KAWAGOE Kenta
Shooting (Cold Creek), 2022, photo
Demolition of Mihako Theater, 2013, video installation, 33min. 23sec.
Attu Island, Alaska from Sight Recovery/Balloon Possession, 2022, ink on paper, C-print
We will hold a series of talk events by the artists explaining their works and inviting experts associated with the artists.
［Closing Talk］ *Ended
*Admission Free / Reservations required / Available only in Japanese
*Please enter at the museum by 18:00.
Please book from the booking form before the deadline.
Booking Form ＞＞ *The booking has been closed.
［Lecture & Talk］ *Ended
*Admission Free / Reservations required / Available only in Japanese
*Please enter at the museum by 18:00.
［Gallery Talks by Shiga Lieko］ *Ended
*Admission Free / Reservations required / Available only in Japanese
［Artist talk by Takeuchi Kota］ *Ended
*Admission Free / Reservations required
*With Japanese-English consecutive interpretation.
［Artists’ Talk］ *Ended
*Admission Free / Reservations required
*With Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation.
［Related exhibition］
Shiga Lieko will hold a related exhibition in her open studio at Studio Parlor (Kogouda, Toda-gun, Misato-cho, Miyagi Prefecture).
For more information, please visit the artist's Instagram.
In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition, a monograph (in Japanese and English) is published for each artist that includes images of their works in addition to the artist’s own texts about their work and creative process, and contributions from experts.
The PDF files are available to view on the PUBLICATIONS page.
*The monographs are not for sale.
[Distribution of monograph] *The booking has been closed.
The monograph will be distributed to those who participate in the related events, and complete the questionnaire.
*Due to reaching the planned number, distribution at the event has ended.
*Applications for domestic mail distribution has been closed as well.
Photo:TAKAHASHI Kenji
Applications from the public were solicited in June 2020, and the selection committee members nominated candidate artists, including those from the public, and selected nominees through discussion. The two winners were then decided upon through an interactive screening process that included preliminary research on each artist, online-based studio visits and interviews.
International Selection Committee
Sofía HERNÁNDEZ CHONG CUY (Director, Kunstinstituut Melly)
SUMITOMO Fumihiko (Director, Arts Maebashi / Associate professor, Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts)
TAKAHASHI Mizuki (Executive Director and Chief Curator, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile))
Carol Yinghua LU (Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum)
WASHIDA Meruro (Director, Towada Art Center)
KONDO Yuki (Program Director, Tokyo Arts and Space)
*Positions and titles current as of the time of the selection process.
Selection Secretariat
Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT]
Artist Statement
For the past two years I have invited a wide variety of people to my studio in the town of Misato, Miyagi Prefecture for talks, lectures, and workshops, and these have formed the basis of my practice. Through opening up my workspace, which is also my living space, I have been blessed with a range of experiences and many new encounters that I never would have imagined. These experiences have caused me to view the past 12 years of reconstruction following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, characterized by the overwhelming forces of capital and state planning which are virtually impossible to resist, not only as a modern-day form of oppression, but also as a process that suggests possibilities for new ideas, different perspectives, diverse paths and sometimes conflicting forces to emerge along the way, and for these to closely interconnect. With only my own body as a mirror, I hope to present an exhibit that illuminates and reflects into the gallery the accumulation of events that have occurred during this time.