Willie Xaiwouth

Artists were invited to join a gallery tour of the exhibition Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Best Collection Ⅲ Breaking the Conventional: New Self-Portraits, organized by the museum guide volunteers. After the tour, they joined a gathering where participants brought in food and enjoyed a casual conversation.

The tour began from Hakata-machiya Furusato-kan, a small museum that introduces the history and culture of Hakata, including local life and landscape especially in the Meiji and Taisho eras, along with the crafts of artisans. Next place Xaiwouth visited was the Tachiarai Peace Memorial Museum, which works as a station to address the importance of peace. The last destination was the Kyosei-no-sato museum, located inside a renovated building of an old school in a rural area. There, Xaiwouth met Yanagi Kazunobu, an art director, and Oto Etsuko, a fashion designer and manager, both of whom guided the artists with detailed explanations.

At a camping site in Nokonoshima, Xaiwouth took time to see the madake bamboos used for bamboo crafts and fence, which he plans to combine with the moso-dake he got earlier for the new artwork.

During the talk, Willie explained his previous works including sculpture, photography, installation, and painting, which focused on themes such as memory and environmental change. The artist also mentioned that he hopes to interweave Laotian bamboo culture where he got much inspiration, and another material from Fukuoka in his new residency artwork.

ANON LIGHT BESPOKE is a studio based in Fukuoka where they work for designing and producing the lighting. Xaiwouth made a visit there and learned about many things, including washi papers and their materials, as well as ideas for lighting and their source of inspirations.

On this day, Xaiwouth made a visit to a bamboo forest in Fukuoka city, to gather the bamboo trees for his work, the material traditionally used both in his home country Laos as well as in Japan. Xaiwouth cut the bamboo tress by himself and took them back to studio.

Artists took time to see the collection show as well as some backyard facilities including the reference library, storage, archive, and shooting room, where they were given some detailed explanations from each appointed staff.

Xaiwouth met some museum staff and coordinators for the first time. After the orientation meeting and a guided tour in the museum, Xaiwouth biked around the area with other artists nearby Artist Cafe Fukuoka.