Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2003: Human Beings as Part of Nature

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2003: 

Human Beings as Part of Nature

by John McGee

Stefan Banz, I Built This Garden For Us, 2003, installation 
(Photos: John McGee)

Japanese traditions—rice, sake and kimono—are Tokamachi's heritage. The town's future, however, may be in contemporary art. Tokamachi is the largest of six neighboring municipalities in Niigata Prefecture's picturesque Shinano Basin currently hosting the second Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial. 

Echigo-Tsumari is one of the top rice-producing regions in Japan. But like many rural areas, it suffers from depopulation as local residents age and youth flee agricultural life. In 2000, the region launched the Triennial as a revitalization effort—fill the small towns, gravelly rivers, terraced rice paddies and forested hills with international contemporary art, and tourists will bring their yen. The first Triennial netted 160,000 visitors. 

This year, 157 artists, art groups, architects and university labs from 23 countries were invited. Don't expect to see everything in a day—the 224 artworks (including holdovers from 2000) are dispersed into every corner of Echigo-Tsumari's 762 square kilometers. Some cluster in easy-access town centers, but many perch on high mountain slopes or pop up alongside winding backcountry roads. 

Tokamachi, the de facto headquarters of the Triennial, has several interesting pieces near its train station. Takaaki Fujiki+Fujiki Studio KOU::ARC made totems to the city's history by wrapping giant, brightly colored loose socks around cement utility poles lining local roads. Claude Leveque's Tambour, like several other artworks in the show, looks best at night. An angled, round mirror rotates under bright lights, reflecting a slow-tracking spot on surrounding buildings. 

Kiki Smith, Pause, 2003, located 
inside Dragon Museum of Contemporary
Art by Cai Guo Qiang (2000)

Dropping jet-set artists into Podunk farm towns has potential pitfalls. In 2000, some artists treated the location as a blank canvas, referring more to their egos than to the sites. This year is better, perhaps because more local communities were involved—50 compared to two in 2000. And many, if not most artworks at least superficially utilize local cultural and geographical features. 

An asphalt parking lot by R&Sie, for example, ripples and mounds, simulating the lumpy terrain it now covers. Architect Office Casagranda & Rintala's shady park is a Zen dry landscape garden of tumbled glass, blacktop and white stones plus a children's playground with tire swings. Rusting panels of buttressed Cor-ten steel create internal walls and separate the park from the rice fields. 

One popular piece nicely combines work from both Triennials. Kiki Smith seated white ceramic girls on steps inside Cai Guo Qiang's Dragon Museum of Contemporary Art (2000), a climbing kiln built on a steep hillside at the bottom of a ski resort. The top of the slopes gives a view down into a stunning valley on the other side. Stefan Banz borrows it as the scenic frame for a flower garden. 

Sometimes it's hard to tell an artwork from local beautification projects—flowers in traffic circles spell out "drive safely" in kanji and public parks dot the roadside. Alas, such over-designed efforts merely crowd the inherent beauty of Echigo-Tsumari. Many of the art installations, too, while nice, feel like lily-gilding. Perhaps next Triennial someone will propose a project to remove a piece rather than add one. 

The greatest successes are architectural. Echigo-Tsumari is full of the dumpy shops, substandard housing and rundown hotels typical of Japan. New buildings like MVRDV's Snow Country Agrarian Culture Center, Hiroshi Hara + Atelier f's Echigo-Tsumari Kouryukan, and James Turrell's House of Light (2000) give the region truly useful models for future development.

This exhibition was held July-Sep 2003 in Echigo-Tsumari, Niigata Prefecture, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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