In today's globalized art world, there are many biennials and triennial exhibitions. The Aichi Triennial, which benefited from the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, is not one of the most famous, but the new Aichi Triennial, "Still Alive," which just opened in mid-summer this year, has touched the audience in this age of uncertainty with its simple appearance and warmth of love.As the first woman to be appointed artistic director of the Triennial, Makoto Kataoka has assembled a curatorial team of nine industry veterans from different parts of the world as advisors. The team worked collectively in a special online manner in the era of the epidemic, as they worked together to recommend and select artists and coordinate follow-up landings. The highly professional curatorial team led the Triennial to achieve two breakthroughs: first, local folk arts and crafts, performing arts and public education programs were no longer a companion to contemporary visual arts, but were placed on an equal footing, with a carefully polished presentation that unlocked more artistic possibilities. The second breakthrough is that the Triennial does not deliberately try to magnify the epidemic itself; it focuses on the social structural ills exposed by the epidemic and the far-reaching transformation of the way the art world works in the post-epidemic era. This is perhaps the unique Japanese view of the disaster: a calm stoicism towards the suffering, with the survivors secretly assuming full responsibility and accumulating the energy for recovery and reconstruction after the disaster. The gesture of sharing a common destiny runs through "Still Alive", and the connection between people becomes stronger and stronger through this exhibition. The Aichi Triennial brings together groups of friends who are committed to unlocking solutions to social realities such as inequality and discrimination, and to pursuing the values of sustainability and equity and justice.

I Am Still Alive

The theme of the Triennial is "I Am Still Alive" by renowned conceptual artist Winnie Kawahara. The Aichi-born, New York-based artist sent three consecutive telegrams in late 1969, implicitly suggesting that he was going to commit suicide. A month later, he sent the message "I Am Still Alive". In the 30 years between then and 2000, 900 telegrams with the same content were sent to a variety of recipients, including close friends and curators with whom he worked. Win Kawahara lived a life of complete seclusion, barely appearing in public and refusing to be photographed or recorded for interviews. He does not participate in exhibition-related activities and replies to invitations to art exhibitions with the same phrases. His personal life was completely detached from the crowd, and these telegrams were the evidence of his survival, a channel that connected him to the world. At the time, telegrams were a means of urgent communication, but the repetition of messages dissolved the sense of urgency and even seemed hollow and vague. Win Kawahara does not provide a textual interpretation of all his creations, including "I am still alive," but for those who lived through the pandemic, the phrase has a profound meaning. The affirmation "I am still alive" contains the purest and most profound reflection on the meaning of life and time.

Win Kawahara passed away in 2014. In this exhibition, he not only remains "alive" in his works, but is also reborn by the curiosity and tribute of the artists who will follow him. Yuki Okumura, who lives in Europe, interviewed nine people who knew him well, and their verbal narratives build the listener's fantasy of his real life. As with Kawahara's trademark absence, in the narratives of the interlocutors, Kawahara's name is replaced by "he" or "that man," a rule set by Okumura. The abstract "he" in this context also refers to Stanley Brouwn, another conceptual artist active during the same period as Kawahara. The latter measured time and space on the scale of individual lives, and lived a life of complete secrecy, with few photographs and interviews in existence. A mysterious new character is born, "he" is the overlap of the life trajectories of Brouwn and Kawahara. The real memories keep blurring the specific individuals, and the group of pioneering artists of conceptual art emerges and reveals itself in the chaos. Yuuki Okumura's art breaks away from the stereotypical narrative of art history and dives into another vivid parallel reality.

Love of the Earth

The curatorial team intends to discover the artist community nurtured by the land of Aichi. Aichi artist Kiyoko Kishimoto, who was active in the 1960s Tokyo "neo-avant-garde" movement, has taken love and freedom as her credo and has campaigned for social change. This female artist's neo-Dadaist street performance broke free of the male-centered discourse and took aim at the deep-seated inequality of power. Her death at the age of 49 left a legacy in art history. Ryoji Koiue, who is about the same age as Kiyoko Kishimoto, is a quiet figure. He was born in Tsunagata, one of the exhibition areas of this year's Triennale. Since the end of the Heian period, Tsunagata has been known for its pottery industry, ranking among the six oldest kilns in Japan. Tsunagata's pottery industry evolved with the times, producing teapots in the Edo period and developing industrial pottery products such as ceramic tiles in the Meiji period. To this day, ceramics is still the main industry in the area. After growing up in a rich cultural heritage and receiving an education in traditional pottery, Ryoji Koiie went to Kyoto in the 1960s and was inspired by the avant-garde potter Kazuo Yagi to devote himself to the cause of modern innovation in pottery. Ryoji Koiue moves comfortably between the two fields of modern art and pottery, fusing the natural material properties of clay and flame with man-made properties. His clay art carries modern social issues, and the theme of his work in this exhibition is about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the artist's anti-nuclear energy stance is clearly expressed. Also in Changshi, Delcy Morelos from Colombia traveled here to form a friendship with clay. The moist clay is mixed with cloves, cinnamon and other spices and dried to make the rounded shape of a Japanese confectionery dafu. The inspiration for the creation came from the custom of burying cookies in the earth to give thanks to the goddess of the earth in the Andes of South America. The clay dafu is a mixture of soil from the Land of the Rising Sun and faith from the other side of the world, and is laid flat on the floor of the former site of a clay pipe factory. This natural creation, which was created in response to local conditions, is visually pleasing and has a warm fragrance.

Another exhibition venue in Aichi Prefecture is Ichinomiya, the textile town that produces the most wool products in Japan. The anthropological research of Kaoru Endo, a new generation of creators, uncovered the connection between Ichinomiya's textile craftsmanship and its history, mythology and daily life. Noting that the Chinese character for "beauty" means "sheep are beautiful when they are large," Kaoru Endo's aesthetic examination of the image of the sheep revolves around both the textual material and the independent use of Ichinomiya's equipment and processes to weave a wool umbrella. The large wool umbrella hangs in the air like a tent or a coat to keep out the cold, evoking warmth and softness of tactile memory. In addition to Tokoname pottery and Ichinomiya weaving, there is another traditional craft that has become a source of inspiration for contemporary art in the Triennale. The Arimatsu district of Nagoya City is famous for its "Narumi-no-mori" dyeing and weaving process. The old buildings such as stores and houses in the area are well preserved, and tie-dye fabrics are often used as curtains floating in the street, giving it an Edo Ukiyo-e style. Mit Jai Inn, who comes from a minority group in Thailand, fell in love with the harmony and quietness of the city life here, and chose several houses in Arizon and replaced the curtains under the eaves with ribbon-like paintings with heavy brush strokes. Sunlight and air pass through the curtains, and the border between public and private space is deflated, with contemporary and traditional visual elements coexisting perfectly in one place.

The earth nurtures people and nourishes pottery, textile, tie-dye and other craft cultures and industries. Folk crafts, which have been regarded as distinct from art, are reassessed within the framework of the Aichi Triennial. Local folklore and handicrafts, of which locals are proud, are brought to life and vitalized by contemporary art. Rather than clinging to a closed past of localities and skills, contemporary art practitioners are striving to build bridges between local and other cultures, and to creatively perpetuate traditions into the present and the future. The love of the earth revitalizes local culture and enhances the attractiveness of the region. The Aichi Triennale's "affectionate card" has won the trust of our fellow countrymen, allowing art to move out of the static and serious institutions and into the social scene with a strong sense of life. The artists' feet are on the earth of Aichi, and their ears are listening to the whispers of the land.

A friendly healing

Confronting the trauma of the epidemic is a brave step to "remain alive". Red Forest and Blue Clouds," a new work by Daisuke Kosugi, who now lives in Norway, is set in a nursing practice room in the former site of a nursing school. The skills of caring for life from birth to end are trained here, while the real life and death take place outside the scene. Daisuke Kosugi's sound installation compensates for the imaginative dimension of life. Visitors roam between the different beds where patients are physically absent, hearing the whispered voices of nurses, patients, elderly couples, children and other kinds of characters. Can the suppressed pain be expressed and transmitted? Daisuke Kosugi is deeply skeptical of "healing", but the artist is still willing to invite the audience to listen and mourn in silence. Kader Attia's six-year-old video work "Reflecting Memory" about "phantom limb pain" takes a post-colonial stance to expose the social and individual pains caused by colonization. After the amputation of a limb due to an accident or disease, the pain of the limb that no longer exists is called phantom limb pain. The artist visits surgeons, prosthetists, users, psychopaths, musicians, dancers, and other subjects in succession, and extrapolates phantom limb pain as a legacy of historical trauma. Even though the painful experiences of massacres, wars, discrimination and, in recent years, epidemics and isolation have passed, the memories surrounding them are still as painful as the amputated limbs. To ease the pain of the phantom limb, the mirror covers the missing part and stands facing the full side of the limb, mirroring the mutilation.

Trauma needs to be soothed and healed. Kader-Attiyah's treatment program clearly relies on visual imagery to achieve a misrecognition-based repair. This year's Triennial, however, goes beyond visual fiction and turns to the path of healing on the conceptual and practical level with a solid Sociological Imagination. The Fukushima poet Ryoichi Wagata, who was in the hardest-hit area of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, recorded his survival in the language of poetry and compiled a collection of poems called Poetry of Gravel. At a time when everyday life had come to an abrupt end and lives were in danger, it dawned on people that there was an urgent need to change the way they looked at life and lived it, and Poems of Gravel is a memorial to that reflection. Now that Ryoichi Wako is once again in the midst of a special situation such as the epidemic, just like us, he has taken up his pen to put into words what he is thinking at the moment. Instead of cynical bigotry, these poems are full of hope. This "loving" hope is reinforced by the Triennial's special program, Learning.

The Learning program is based on the judgment that "art is not only for a few knowledgeable enthusiasts, but encourages everyone to enjoy and appreciate it in their own way." Contemporary art is by no means incomprehensible; artists are ordinary individuals in society, just like ordinary people. "Learning" brings culture and art back to everyday life, allowing participants to broaden and deepen their understanding of public issues, and ultimately return to their inner selves. The learning program includes courses in which the Artistic Director himself invites experts to speak to the public about the history and traditions of Aichi, as well as workshops that train young people to participate in building artistic communities. The volunteer training for the three-year exhibition is even more innovative, with a team of instructors teaching them appreciation techniques and allowing them to use their strengths to appreciate artistic expression in an unconventional way. Volunteers and visitors interacted with each other in a way that was very different from the usual one-way guided tours. Not to be outdone, artists are also deeply involved in the learning program. For example, the "Arizon Craft Department" organized by Akane Miyata brings together locals and visitors to learn about each other's weaving skills. A new community space is created in an atmosphere of relaxed conversation. This is the most powerful part of "Still Alive": it sees "friendship" as an ideal. Friendship means tolerance and recognition of the differences that exist between equal people. In a culturally fragmented society where we have long been accustomed to ignoring one another, the Three-Year Exhibition breaks down egoism and allows fraternal action to help us weave friendships, bridge generational gaps, heal the wounds of poverty and exclusion, and repair the face of history torn by hatred and violence. Fraternal action generates wisdom, knowledge and inspiration, providing sustenance for being alive. Friendship keeps us focused on the present, open to events that are still unforeseen, and begins to build a future that is open to all possibilities.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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