The Shiseido Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Shiori Watanabe 宿/Syuku, which will be on view from Wed., November 6 to Thu., December 26, 2024.
Watanabe focuses on motifs that evoke conflicts between humankind and nature, such as invasive and extinct species, producing many works with implications relating to issues inherent in human interpersonal relations.
The exhibition will feature Watanabe’s major work Sans room, in which she constructs an autonomous ecosystem by connecting aquariums and planters with hoses to circulate water and bacteria. Also, there will be a video installation showing a new Noh work inspired by the classic Noh play Okina. In Okina, a cyclical relationship among people, deities, and nature is portrayed, in which a deity inhabits a person to offer prayers before returning the person to their human state, reflecting a marginal view of nature that lies dormant throughout the Japanese archipelago. Watanabe has noted that particularly since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been an increased awareness of the human body as a host that viruses inhabit, as well as a heightened sense of moving towards symbiosis with other species and individuals, transcending borders between nations and communities.
In this exhibition, dynamics of the relationship between nature and humans that have shaped Japan’s ecosystem are explored over a long time-scale. The works shed light on various issues inherent in this relationship from the perspective of 宿/syuku (inhabiting or dwelling), while seeking clues for how we might live in the future.
