EXHIBITIONS

Fujiko Nakaya

FOGSCAPE #47412 2014
Fujiko NAKAYA
Photo：Keizo Kioku

Nakaya presented the world’s first fog sculpture at Expo ’70 in Osaka, blanketing the dome of the Pepsi Pavilion with man-made water fog. Since then Nakaya’s fog sculptures are found in art museums, parks, theaters, and public squares around the globe. Representative works include Foggy Forest at Children’s Park in Showa Kinen Park, Tokyo (1992), and works for the Yokohama Triennale (2008) and the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012). Most recently, Nakaya shrouded Paris’s Place de la Republique in fog, an installation she titled Freedom Fog (2013).

In addition to her work with fog, Nakaya has long been regarded as a pioneer of video art in Japan. Since 1971, she has created video artworks based on the theme of communication. In 1972, she co-founded VIDEO HIROBA, Japan’s first video collective, and in 1980, she opened Video Gallery SCAN in Harajuku, Tokyo, where she organized workshops and competitions to promote young video artists. For three decades, SCAN hosted video exhibitions and international festivals for cultural exchange.

For SIAF, Nakaya has prepared FOGSCAPE #47412, an installation in which a cascade of fog flows down the internal courtyard wall of the Sapporo Art Museum. Interacting with the wind, fog gradually fills in the courtyard, overflows and engulfs the museum building. Borders disappear and inside/outside become integrated. Fog begins to decode the signs of its surroundings; the form and volume changing instantaneously and perpetually in response to the atmospheric and environmental conditions. Fog Sculpture is a probe of this dynamic interchange innate in nature. Visitors will physically experience this dynamism of nature and will be prompted to rediscover our relationship to nature and environment, and to reconsider the state of the arts of the modern city today.

http://www.nakaya.net/