Saeborg “I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU” / TSUDA Michiko “Life is Delaying” Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2022-2024 Exhibition
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space 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 years of continuous support.
An award exhibition will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo featuring Saeborg and Tsuda Michiko, the winners of the fourth TCAA.
These exhibitions featuring Saeborg and Tsuda Michiko, winners of the fourth TCAA, are titled “I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU” and “Life is Delaying” respectively. While the two adjacent exhibitions are separate presentations that differ significantly in terms of their concerns and creative approach, they have a commonality in that viewers’ actions in the galleries become part of the work. In viewing these works they also face themselves, and this leads to examination of relationships with others, including animals, and of roles that society expects.
■ Saeborg “I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU”
Saeborg’s primary practice of performance incorporating latex bodysuits has varied with each iteration, and new characters have continually emerged. The work in this exhibition, building on the foundation of past performances, adopts the perspective of “care” in the context of relationships between people and animals, which have formed a central axis of the artist’s works. By having viewers in the gallery become part of the performance, the distinctive structure of a museum exhibition is utilized to stage an event in which the viewers at times become the viewed.
■ TSUDA Michiko “Life is Delaying”
In this exhibition Tsuda explores the theme of physicality, which has strongly interested her in recent years. She presents an installation incorporating video equipment, centered on a new work inspired by family goings-on in a video shot when a video camera first appeared in her childhood home. A reenactment of commonplace events, captured through the lens from the camera operator’s perspective, takes documentation of the family – the smallest basic unit of society – as its starting point, but broadens its scope to encompass the positions of individuals within groups and systems.
Both artists take the body as one of their points of departure, and have developed their unique practices by alternating between production of artworks and physical expression. During the exhibition, in addition to the works of view, performances and other programs will beckon viewers into experiences that link the exhibition venue and their own bodies.
*All programs are subject to change.
Saeborg
Photo: ZIGEN
Born in Toyama in 1981. Based in Tokyo.
Saeborg is an imperfect cyborg that is half human and half toy. In performances and exhibitions both in Japan and abroad, Saeborg creates latex bodysuits through which she can artificially transcend physical characteristics such as age and gender.
“Ultra Unreal” installation view at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2022 Photo: Alex Davies
“House of L” performance at Aichi Triennale 2019: Taming Y/Our Passion, Aichi Prefectural Art Theatre, Nagoya, 2019
Photo: Masahiro Hasunuma
“Pigpen” performance at Dark Mofo 2019, Avalon Theatre, Hobart, Australia Photo: Dark Mofo 2019
“Cycle of L” performance at The Museum of Art, Kochi, 2020
Photo: Taisuke Tsurui
TSUDA Michiko
Photo: Yuji Oku
Born in Kanagawa in 1980. Based in Ishikawa.
Tsuda Michiko produces a diverse range of installations and performance pieces that incorporate characteristics of video media. She creates spaces containing video equipment and simple structures which blur perceptual boundaries, altering viewers’ perspectives and actions and inciting contemplation of cognition and physical sensation.
Artist Statement
I’m sure I am not the only one whose concerns surrounding the body underwent radical change during the COVID-19 pandemic. I experienced how consciousness of our distance from others affects our physical behavior, even at the level of society’s smallest units such as the family. I believe that the relationship between the camera’s location, the frame, and the person on film can be a tool to measure the body’s sense of distance. This exhibition is analogous to seeing a poster peeling off the wall and gently sticking it back on, something that you might not need to do, but it’s an extension of your instinct to act on the things you perceive.
Tokyo Shigusa, 2021/2023, installation view at “ICC Annual 2023: Shapes of Things,” NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo Photo: KIOKU Keizo Photo Courtesy: NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]
Tokyo Behavior, 2021, installation view at “Back TOKYO Forth,” Tokyo International Cruise Terminal, 2021
Photo: Akira Arai（Nacása & Partners Inc.）
Still from so far, not far, 2023
You would come back there to see me again the following day., 2016, installation view: “Open Space 2016: Media Conscious,” NTT Inter Communication Center [ICC], Tokyo Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto
While the exhibition is on view various programs are scheduled.
“Saedog,” the dog made from latex body suits, will perform at the venue following time, during open hours of this exhibition.
*The time schedule is subject to change. Please check a notice board at the venue or Saeborg’s SNS.
[Running event by Tsuda Michiko]
The event, running around the museum (Koto-ku) with Tsuda Michiko will be held.
*Details to be announced on the TCAA website.
［Artist Talk］ *Ended
Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, a member of the TCAA 2022-2024 international selection committee, will speak with the featured artists about the selection process, their exhibited works, and future plans.
*Admission Free / Reservations required / First-come-first-serve basis. With Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation.
Please make your reservations via booking form by booking deadline.
Booking Form ＞＞ *The booking has been closed.
Monographs (in Japanese and English, not for sale) on each of the winners are scheduled to be published in July 2024. In addition to images of the artists’ works, they will feature their texts discussing their creative processes and essays on the artists by specialists.
After publication, they will be available on the TCAA website and will be distributed by post (in Japan only) to those who request them.
*Details to be announced on the website.
Applications from the public were solicited in June 2021, 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]
NOMURA Shino [Senior Curator, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery]
TAKAHASHI Mizuki [Executive Director and Chief Curator, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile)]
WASHIDA Meruro [Director, Towada Art Center]
Carol Yinghua LU [Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum]
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]
The press release is available here.
Artist Statement
In this exhibition, I present a new work based on my experience during last year’s overseas research and on my own recent works, House of L and Super Farm. My focus is on investigating the true nature of what we call “weakness” and “strength.” Set in a space resembling a life-sized toy farm, the work delivers an immersive experience transcending boundaries between the body and synthetic materials, and between human beings and other animals. At times it brings to the surface thoughts and emotions that are usually kept locked away. Central to this new work are organisms such as pets, seemingly purposeless entities that defy the usual survival-of-the-fittest logic of evolutionary competition, securing their places in the ecosystem by embodying human emotions and fantasies (in a sense, surviving purely through the power of love). With this modest endeavor, my aim is to push the envelope and explore this enigmatic power to the fullest.