Kick-off Talk
Jin Choi & Thomas Shine
×Shimizu Miho×Yamamoto Seiko

Admission Free *English translation is available for Choi & Shine.

■Jin Choi and Thomas Shine of Choi + Shine Architects [Period of Stay: 18 July - 18 September, 2023]
Established in 2003, Live and work in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Our public art started with the “Land of Giants,” the internationally awarded, human-shaped electrical transmission towers designed for Iceland. These large, functional artistic installations transformed mundane infrastructure into artworks on the landscape. Our more recent public artworks use intricately patterned, community made large scale lace to create poetic intervention and new interpretation to public spaces.
In Fukuoka we will design and create a new work, informed by the city and culture, made with local volunteers. Working together towards a single goal creates a strong community spirit, with strangers bonding together, sharing ownership of the work. The project epitomizes true community art and demonstrated the social responsibility of public art. The process of making the art becomes a meaningful and significant part of the artwork.
The ability to read a site, and create thoughtful and resonating works is where we have excelled in our projects, and we sincerely hope to do so for the City of Fukuoka.

■Shimizu Miho [Period of Stay: 10 July - 27 September, 2023]
Born in 1976, Lives and works in Tokyo
Using textiles as her main material, Shimizu creates sets for live events and video productions, as well as costumes and props for performers and dancers. She is interested in the way the shape and meaning of her creations are transformed by the performer's movements, and has been working on sets in which the performer disappears and reappears, and humorous costumes that cover the face and/or parts of the body, transforming the performer into a monkey or an ostrich.
In recent years, she has been exploring themes such as dreams, puppetry, and kites, through exchanges with local communities and professionals in the field. In Fukuoka, Shimizu will research traditional kite culture in Kyushu, using a pair of eye-shaped kites she made with Vietnamese craftsmen as a starting point and create works that reflect her encounters with people and stories.

■Yamamoto Seiko [Period of Stay: 4 July - 27 September, 2023]
Born in 1981, lives and works in Fukuoka, Japan
Yamamoto‘s creation derives from the homogeneous atmosphere of the new town where she grew up and her uncomfortable feelings regarding physical stances there. Recently the artist has applied this point of view to other cities she visited for residency programmes. The artist captured the town and lives of people through observation as “colors of signs, “and her creation expands in different media such as video, installation, and sculptures.
In Fukuoka, Yamamoto plans to do research on steel, the material which she has been working on since she was a student, and also about some historical places related to “modern industrialization after the Meiji era,” that had a significant impact on her own body which grew up in apartment complex. Her research will be foundational to her video installation work which raises a question about how human bodies have been treated, changed or will change through time to time.

092-263-1100

Fukuoka Asian Art Museum