23. Februar – 3. March 2024
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residence Program
The results of the artist-in-residence programme were presented in two installations at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and the ACF Gallery.
ACF Gallery: In Search of Utopia (-et in Arcadia ego)
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum: Study for a Drawing Room (for the Phantom of FAAM)
Photo: Ittoku Kawasaki
15. Oktober – 13. November 2022
Duo Exhibition with Hanae Utamura
WAITINROOM, Tokyo
A review of the exhibition “STRATA – Naho Kawabe & Hanae Utamura” by Andrew Durbin FRIEZE online.
Drawing series, 2022, 70 x 50 cm
Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka (Qsyum!)
Video
https://oase-der-kunst.nahokawabe.net
A change of studio has catapulted me into another world. My old studio life in Hamburg had the advantages of a gentrified district, my new studio is in the City Nord with concrete and empty shops. The break motivated me to make a video collage, because at second glance City Nord turned out to be a place for creative people. With Le Corbusier, it was supposed to be an “office city in the green” and offer a “New Way of Working”. The goal collapsed in the 1990s. Afterwards, studios and clubs called “Ebene+14” sprang up in the now empty spaces. Thanks to good rents, an agile art oasis developed. But the idea of renewing the lousy image of City Nord through culture did not last long: from 2009 onwards, new office blocks were built, the substance renovated, and the artists moved out. The story of these changes is told from the perspective of the activists of “Ebene+14” through interviews, historical photos, 3D reconstructions and current views.
This Project „Das war mal eine tolle Idee. Ebene +14: Oase der Kunst” is a video-collage by Naho Kawabe with narratives by the artists:
Annette Mewes-Thoms
Eva Wehdemeyer
Falk von Traubenberg
Josef Greiner
Jutta Konjer
Oliver Maybohm
Wolfgang Schindler (Art Space KX)
and
Christina Herzig (pharmacist)
Drone: Heiko Neumeister
Camera: Naho Kawabe
3D: René Kusnawijaya
Sound: Veit Kenner
Editing: Naho Kawabe
Title logo: Koichiro Isogai
Transcript: Lea van Hall
Web-Designe: KRYPTOTHEK
This project is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in Germany
NEUSTART KULTUR
14. January – 19. March 2022
Solo Exhibition
Tom Reichstein Contemporary, Hamburg Germany
charcoal, motor, barrier tape
https://vimeo.com/523454454
A Project of “Artist in Quarantine” by nachtspeicher23 e.V., Hamburg
Drawing series, 76 x 110 cm
web-based art project
https://camera-isolata.nahokawabe.net
The “Camera Isolata” is a project realized through a special grant for artists under the Sars-Cov-19 pandemic from the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung. The motto of this grant is „Art knows no shutdown“ and it supports projects that take an artist’s approach to a world that is under lockdown 2020.
The Latin derived term “Camera Isolata“ characterizes a closed and isolated room – concretely and symbolically – an isolated space situation. Camera Isolata is the space in which we isolate ourselves during the pandemic. At the same time the modern use of the word Camera refers to an electronic optical device, the camera, often built into a computer or smartphone that produces a cut out of people’s upper half, taken from real space and cast into virtual space. This way Camera Isolata becomes an online space, forming its geographic centre somewhere under the ocean in submarine cables like the Asia pacific gateway, the SeaMeWe, the FLAG Atlantic and many others.
As the custodian of the Camera Isolata I chose a fictional art-figure loaned from a fossilised yet still existing animal, the Nautilus. This creature that has been living in the oceans for some 500 million years has several hollowed out chambers (camera) in its shell. Its ancient eyes have no lens, creating an image like a camera obscura.
This Project „Camera Isolata” consists of three experiment-videos with six artists who I invited:
Jane Brucker, visual artist, USA
Miss Hawaii, musician, Japan
Henrik Malmström, photographer, Argentina
Setbyol Oh, light designer, Germany
Ziyun Wang, painter, China
Yohei Yama, painter, Vietnam,
accompanied by six short texts about their recent lives in their residences.
At first, I used an online meeting app, of the type that rapidly spread through our societies during this lockdown, to contact the artists living in different and far-flung countries to discuss our situation under the pandemic.
As an aside, I asked each of them what they might want do to get to know someone new. Though perhaps a very naive question, after 2020, our previous established ways of making contact with people might change dramatically. I thought, maybe we can make it the subject of this project.
Online communication will continue to expand, honing its methods and tools. While it seems convenient for humanity to use this new technology and develop its processual practice, humanity also changes in the process. We found it interesting to explore what is unlikely to work with this new online technology rather than to discuss how to master it – including an awareness of future generations potentially losing today’s knowledge, social behaviours and aesthetic sensibilities.
In the end, we decided to do three communication-experiments / actions in three groups using that small online space of the „Camera Isolata“. In each case two artists – who have never met – spend a certain amount of time together in this room, in quasi quarantine.
Group 1 Spend time without talking (meditation)
Group 2 Spend time working (manual work)
Group 3 Spend time drawing
When the custodian signals the end of the quarantine period, each isolated artist takes their still running computer and walks out, until the WiFi connection breakes up, symbolising the boundaries of our social connection.
Video sound: Veit Kenner
Proofreading: Helmut Kostreba, Masaya Kawakats
This project is supported by Hamburgische Kulturstiftung, Hilfsfonds »Kunst kennt keinen Shutdown« 2020
charcoal, string, light bulb, battery
Exhibition: Boxes Museum, Guangzhou (CN)
Collection: Boxes Museum, Guangzhou (CN)
3 Exhibitions (The Blend Apartments & Artist in Residence / FLAG studio, Osaka, 8. Salon e.V., Hamburg), Catalogue, Video
A art projekt by Naho Kawabe with the artists whose native language is not German
as part of the 30-year partner cities between Hamburg and Osaka Cooperation: Goethe-Institut Osaka Kyoto
In 2019 the 30-year partnership between Hamburg and Osaka will be celebrated. As a Japanese artist living in Hamburg since 2001, I had already actively participated in the two previous anniversaries in 2009 and 2014 already. With those experiences, I drew up an exhibition project at the beginning of 2019, which shows works by artists from Hamburg in Osaka. What is specific to them is that they are the artists who grew up with a different mother tongue and didn’t born in Germany – just like myself.