Inujima "Art House Project"

2010

2010 Inujima "Art House Project", which opened to the public in July 2010 to coincide with the opening of the Setouchi International Art Festival 2010, is a project to revitalize the local villages in Inujima Island. Inviting curator Yuko Hasegawa and architect Kazuyo Sejima to work with us, three galleries and a gazebo were built in a village on the northern part of the island for the initial term of the project. All three galleries exhibited the work of Yukinori Yanagi during this first term.

Project Background

Life and death, human beings and nature, present and past-these ideas are embodied in the masculine verticality of Inujima’s industrial modernization ruins. In contrast, the village on the same island is a site of life lived by generations of villagers with the “eight million gods and goddesses,” symbolizing the horizontal time, feminine everyday life. This set of contrasting metaphors, which underscores Inujima Art House Project, was expressed in the proposal of community revitalization as outlined in my 2001 grand design which proposed to transform the entire island into art. This cannot be a “reconstruction” of the village from an architect’s view, but it must be a “reclamation” of both “body” and”spirit” of Inujima as a singular point conceived from an artist’s view.Paired with Seirensho, which critiques Japanese culture by transmigrating Mishima Yukio to a modernization heritage site, Inujima Art House Project serves a critique of modern civilization, sounding an alarm against the increasing homogenization of the world caused by globalization. This message has greater impact in a village in the Setouchi Inland Sea, a primal landscape of Japan, than in the vortex of consumer culture in a metropolis.
July 2010 Yanagi Yukinori
“INUJIMA NOTE”
2010, published by MIYAKE FINE ART

Exhibited Works:
F-Art House / Yama-no-Kami and Illuminated Sun Flanked by Mirrors
I-Art House / Eyeball Flower Garden
S-Art House / Dollar Web Garden