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.
charcoal, motor, barrier tape
https://vimeo.com/523454454
A Project of “Artist in Quarantine” by nachtspeicher23 e.V., Hamburg
charcoal, string, light bulb, battery
Exhibition: Boxes Museum, Guangzhou (CN)
Collection: Boxes Museum, Guangzhou (CN)
charcoal, motor, string, concrete, metal, feather, size variable
The line over charcoal dust sprinkled on the floor shows the jagged line of the Berlin Wall, boundary between East and West Berlin. A spring spinning in a circle, driven by a small motor, wipes away the charcoal dust. The circle describes the loop line of Berlin S-Bahn running also between 1961 and 1989 (time of the Berlin Wall) across the border,
Exhibition: Waitingroom, Tokyo (JP)
Metal, plastic, glass, lead, paper, fishing line, mirror, LED light, size variable
Exhibitions: Ermekeilkaserne, Bonn (DE) / Schloß Agarthenburg, Agarthenburg (DE)
Metal, mirror, string, plastic, paper, wood, LED, video (HD, 12’40 ),
photo (State Archive Hamburg 720-1 151-81= 17 131), wooden crate: 205 x 146 x 166 cm
The German-Jewish writer, Heinrich Heine, who lived in Paris in exile. Even the 1891 monument to him, ordered by the Austrian empress Sisi, was taken on an involuntary journey from Rome via Corfu to Hamburg, Marseille and Toulon. Heine’s monument was repeatedly set up in these various locations and then diminished, reviled, smeared, or damaged until it was finally hidden in a wooden crate (for 23 years long). “Wandermüde” is a mixed-media installation about the Odyssey of Heine´s sculptural monument. The video shows the currently view of the statue at the Botanic Gardens in Toulon (2014) and the process of the journey the statue.
Exhibition: Galerie im Marstall, Ahrensburg (DE)
Images: catalogue “DELIKATELINIEN” / catalogue “Von Wörtern und Räumen”
Exhibtion: 8. Kunstfrühling, Bremen (DE)
Images: Catalogue “8. Kunstfrühling” / Catalogue “DELIKATELINIEN” / Book “Transitorisch”
Charcoal, spotlight, size variable
Exhibitions: Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo (JP) / Märkisches Museum Witten (DE)
Images: Broschüre “Shiseido Art Egg 05” / Catalogue “boesner art award 2012” / Catalogue “Observer Effect” / Book “Transitorisch“
Wood, metal, raffia, projector, spotlight, video (HD, 8’06, loop)
Based on an original fetish figure of the Mbete tribe in Gabon, which at the same time serves as alter ego of the artist herself, Naho Kawabe expresses her search for the definition of existence in the room-sized installation Why am I here? Kawabe originally discovered the figure at a Hamburg curio shop called Harry’s Hamburger Hafenbasar & Museum, where it was placed together with other fetish figures from different countries, detached from its original function and significance. The figure had probably travelled accidentally to Hamburg by ship and ended up as a “seafarer’s treasure” at the bazaar on Reeperbahn where it stood around as one curio among others, stripped of its cultural context. In Kawabe’s installation, the figure finds itself in another, completely foreign context. Originally a fetish and transplanted into a constantly changing spatiotemporal constellation, the figure raises questions about the stability our self-positioning that is still possible today. Why am I here? confronts the viewer with questions of cultural belonging, border crossings and, in a general sense, the existential question how the coordinates of space and time help shape our identity concepts.
Text by Magnus Pölcher
in: Fuzzy Dark Spot. Videokunst aus Hamburg. Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung Falckenberg
Exhibtions: Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo (JP) / Ermekeilkaserne, Bonn (DE) / Deichtorhallen Sammlung Falckenberg Hamburg (DE) /Kunsthaus Hamburg (DE)
Images: Broschüre ” Shiseido Art Egg 05″ / Catalogue “Observer Effect” / Catalogue “Fuzzy Dark Spot. Videokunst aus Hamburg” / Catalogue “INDEX 11”