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Through the eyes of Hokkaido Artists






Through the eyes of Hokkaido Artists


|Japanese Artist Online Resident Exchange Exhibition |


Date|2022/11/19 (Sat.) -2022/12/25 (Sun.) Opening & Forum|2022/11/19 (Sat.) 15:00 (GMT+8)



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|Through the eyes of Hokkaido Artists|


In May 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the "Absolute Space for the Arts" in Tainan. Deeply attracted by the energy of the people dwelling in the present city coexisting with the traditional buildings and historic sites, I was inspired to create the occasions for exchange through art in this fascinating city, between Tainan and Hokkaido. Therefore, a group exhibition by the artists of Hokkaido had been planned.


However, in the following year, 2020, the world suddenly faced the invisible threat of the Coronavirus. Museums, libraries, and public facilities were forced to close, schools were shut down, children lost the opportunity to learn, and interactions with others were cut off.

In 2022, the struggle against the COVID-19 is still ongoing, and we are living in a society that is coexisting with the virus. Since it is still difficult to visit Taiwan in person, "Absolute Space for the Arts" has proposed a new approach; an "Online Residency,” to realize the exhibition.


For the artists who are particularly concerned about presenting their artworks in real life, the idea of an "Online Residency" raised some uneasiness, but the enthusiastic “Exchange Program" organized by "Absolute Space for the Arts" dispelled all the anxiety. Through the online camera, we walked up the streets of Tainan, went down to the beach, and began a lively exchange with the locals of Tainan, which led to many more experiences than we could have imagined. The materials obtained through correspondence with the Taiwanese people crossed the sea and the artists eagerly produced their artworks in Hokkaido.


This exhibition is based on the theme of "perspectives" of four artists who live and work in Hokkaido, and consists of works in various fields such as Japanese-style painting, digital collage, and sculpture.

Hokkaido, where we live, has a rich natural environment that changes from one season to another. There are beautiful mountain ridgelines, the straight horizon in the far distance, delightful autumn leaves and silent snowy landscapes. We interact with expansive nature in our everyday lives. The way we gaze at nature, as well as the topography, unexpectedly nurtured the “way of viewing,” therefore reflected on theartworks. The works created from these "viewpoints" related to the uniqueness of the vast land of Hokkaido are selected to be shown in Taiwan, a foreign land, and is opened for the local audience to appreciate. Each viewer would have the opportunity to relate and to look into his/her own memories and experiences.


The images of Hokkaido that Taiwanese people have in their minds. The impressions of Taiwan that Hokkaido artists observe. When each one captures each other's cultures in their respective points of view, there should be a better understanding of one's own country, and we hope this exchange would be a starting point for the future opportunities.


The four artists selected for the exhibition are based in Hokkaido and work in a variety of genres and forms of expression.

Yuka Kasai is one of the most promising emerging Japanese-style painter in Hokkaido. She creates Japanese-style paintings from a unique perspective while using traditional techniques and materials. Inspired by everyday sceneries, her interest towards her daily trivial events, or what she hears, and with the different viewpoint in which she tries to capture the landscapes- she explores the fascination of Japanese-style painting in the contemporary world with her very own attitude.

In the "Online Residency" program, Tainan residents are invited to send photographs of "everyday scenes" to Kasai. She would then create Japanese paintings by imagining the landscapes that are associated with the photographic perspectives and stories told by the local Tainan residents. This exhibition will be Kasai's first opportunity to present her works abroad, and we hope to expand the boundaries of Japanese-style painting and convey its further interestingness.








Artist, Erika Kusumi creates meticulous digital collage by gathering multiple layers of her own photographs to present an "unreal" world. She captures existing objects, people, animals, etc. and reconstructs moments seized in various spaces and time frames to create illusionary landscapes. In 2020, she was awarded the “Sapporo Cultural Encouragement Prize,” which is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of art and culture, in recognition of the potential of her genre-bending art expression.

For the "Online Residency,” on receiving the photographs of architecture and familiar landscapes of Tainan from a Taiwanese photographer, Kusumi would incorporate elements that are contrary to those of Hokkaido, and attempts to create digital collage by combining them with her own photographs. The exhibition will be an opportunity to explore the possibilities of constructing a new world where multiple perspectives intersect by identifying the points of contact with Hokkaido in the buildings and landscapes of Tainan, which retains some Japanese influences.







Sculptor Rie Kawakami creates sculptures, installations, and interactive works mainly using metal. Over the years, she has worked with metal in search for a variety of expressions; they vary from light works using wire to large heavy works. She also actively participates in overseas residency programs, creating and exhibiting works not only with metal, but also with the collected materials and stories she has heard and encountered by interacting with the local community during her residency. In pursuit of her own theme of “View of Life," she incorporates metal into the concept of her works as an important geological element related to life, rather than as a mere material for creation. In 2012, she received the “Sapporo Cultural Encouragement Award," and in 2021, the “Hokkaido Cultural Encouragement Award”.

In the "Online Residency," Kawakami will be working on two projects. One is "Fossil of Thought". On receiving old books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed materials from Tainan, Kawakami would place these traces of thoughts that have been replaced by characters and letters, on top of each other as in layers of stratum, then harden them with resin to form the shape of a stone. The other project is named "Let US Keep the Balance.” Using thin iron rods, Kawakami creates a two-directional balance. This project invites viewers to imagine the image of something to be measured on two plates under the theme of "measure" and “balance." In this exhibition, iron sand collected from the sea in Tainan and from the sea in Kawakami's hometown of Ishikari, Hokkaido, will be displayed on the plates. In the course of the project, it became clear that iron sand is not something that the people of Tainan are very familiar with, so we started with a lecture on how to collect the iron sand, which led to an interesting "Exchange Program”. Through the relationship with iron and metal, we hope that the "vitality" that Kawakami seeks to explore will be accepted and experienced in various ways.








Metalwork artist and sculptor Leo Fujisawa works with steel, wood, fiber, and other materials in a genre- crossing creativities covering crafts, sculpture, installation, and stage design. Fujisawa is based in Tarumae. He also organizes “Tarumae arty Plus,” an NPO based also in the same city, where artists and coordinators work together to promote cultural and artistic activities in the local community. In 2017, the“NPO Tarumae arty Plus” received the "Hokkaido Culture Encouragement Award" in recognition of their activities.

In the "Online Residency," Fujisawa would work on three projects of his own. The first project is "Absent Presence," a sculpture of threads created by gravity. Focusing on the textile industry in Tainan, he utilizes“UMORFIL,” a unique fiber developed from fish scales, to have sculptures emerge by gravity; the natural order of things. The threads for the artwork in this exhibition were specially created by the encouragement of "Absolute Space for the Arts" and dyed by with the help of the students from Tainan National University of the Arts. As for this project, the entire process is a trial directed online; from thread production to building up the installation. The second project is "A Calm Day," a sculpture made of thin iron bars. The artist imagines the landscape that emerges from life in Tainan, and creates the artwork by constructing structures with the iron bars. The third project is "Monument to the Origin,” a work that celebrates the creativity of the past that could be traced in old tools. For this exhibition, Fujisawa creates reproductions of the antique tools obtained from the antique shop in Tainan, which he also participated in online as a part of "Exchange Program”. We believe that creating artworks with various online experiments would lead Fujisawa to push the boundaries of genres even more, and generate possibilities in his further developments.








The exhibition was designed to take full advantage of the long and narrow access to the gallery space, providing a fluid connection between the works of the four artists. At the entrance, visitors are greeted by Leo Fujisawa's thread sculpture, controlled by gravity, "Absent Presence," Surrounding this artwork are another sculpture by Fujisawa; "Monument to the Origin," a work carved out from an ancient Taiwanese tool, and Rie Kawakami's "Fossil of Thought," sealing old Taiwanese books, newspapers, and other printed matters in resin. These are arranged to trace back the history and the layers of accumulated time in Taiwan.


Then scrolls and Japanese paintings of Yuka Kasai are placed at a corridor-like space, suitable for close- up viewing, followed by the digital collages of Erika Kusumi and "Let US Keep the Balance" by Rie Kawakami exhibited in the back space. The viewer would feel the overwhelming presence of the two-directional balance made of steel wire, and look up to find the illusory world of digital collage. This space is designed to explore the present-day Tainan, for these works were created through the interaction with people living in Tainan today. The exhibition will be extended to a sunlit patio where Rie Kawakami’s "Element of Earth" and "Island" from "Fossil of Thought" series are displayed.


In Tainan, where contemporary art is flourishing alongside the historical cityscape, four viewpoints of artists from Hokkaido are braided to create an exhibition. In the midst of the Corona disaster, the exhibition will be conducted through "Online Residencies" that have created new possibilities through technological innovations in communication. On viewing the works created through the "Eyes" of the artists that have gazed upon the land of Hokkaido, the viewers are invited to trace its landscape, and would surely relate themselves to the artworks.

We do hope that this exhibition, which was constructed through exchanges with people living in present day Taiwan, the land which once was one single nation, will serve as a venue for future cultural relationships between Hokkaido, Japan and Tainan, Taiwan.



● About Curator


➤ Mari Homma


Born in 1975 in Nikko city, Tochigi, Japan. Based in Sapporo, Japan, ‘withart’ organises exhibitions and workshops for children and families. I offer different opportunities to engage with art more readily by mainly initiating exhibitions as well as workshops by artists with an aim to make the world of art, design and craft more accessible and familiar.




● About Artists


➤ Erika Kusumi


Erika Kusumi records her own experiences of "reality" and creates "digital collage" by overlapping, and digitally processing the layers of photographs in different time and space. When working on her artworks, she makes it a rule to utilize the photographs that are taken by the artist herself. By reconstructing the real landscapes that everyone may recognize, she expresses an unreal world that exists as an extension or parallel to "reality" and our everyday living.



➤ Leo Fujisawa


Born in 1974 in Hokkaido, Japan. Graduated from Dohto University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Design. Lives and works in Tomakomai, Hokkaido.

Utilizing materials such as iron, wood and fiber, Leo Fujisawa works across genres in sculpture, installation, crafts, and stage design, based on his own view of life and death. His work includes "Passage,” a steel sculpture with a seed motif, “Absence of Presence,” a sculpture made from a collection of threads that visualize important elements hidden in everyday life. “A Calm Day" is a sculpture made from iron wire that reexamines the happiness in our daily lives. In recent years, Leo has been working on "Sculpture of Place,” a sculpture that contemplates on the origin of survival and the emergence of a place in the footsteps of humankind. In addition, Leo continues his consideration of human activity and creativity in "Study of Pillars" and "Monuments of Reproductions”.


➤ Rie Kawakami


Born in 1961 in Chiba, Japan. Completed master's degree from Tokyo University of Arts. Lives and works in Ishikari, Hokkaido.

Sapporo based artist. Experienced many artist in residence programs and attending exhibitions in France, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan, U.S.A.

For many years, Rie Kawakami has faced the material of iron, and has been inspired by the variability and origin of the material. She continues to explore expressions that are not limited to physical and visual presence of works, but are conscious of the effects and locality of the exhibition on the space and the viewers. Her recent practice is to visualize the query for life based on the clue of the relationship between the material and immaterial, similarities between micro to macro, the distortions of values that occur between individuals and the total over the vastness of space and time. These have been expressed in sculptures, installations, interactive works, and site-specific works.


➤ Yuka Kasai


Born in 1993 in Abashiri, Hokkaido. Graduated from Sapporo Otani University, Faculty of Arts. Lives and works in Sapporo.

Yuka Kasai discovers the ancient Japanese esthetics such as "mono no aware" and "wabi sabi" in everyday scenery, and depicts them in her Japanese-style paintings. She believes that everything in the world has a spirit equally, therefore paints the moments that she sensed the presence of such spirits in the objects and ordinary sceneries surrounding her. She also believes that paying attention to the smallest occurrences, which might otherwise be overlooked, leads to cherishing each and everyday, and she continues to create works as a means of recording the results of her observation. While her works are based on the technique of Japanese-style painting, in which lines and surfaces are used, she attempts to expand the expression of Japanese-style painting by selecting motifs outside the boundaries of the traditional style.


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