We are always wrapped in cloth from the time when we give our first cry until the time we die. Cloth protects us physically and mentally and it also represents who we are. In various locations on the globe, different kinds of cloth have been made and used, according to the climates and cultures of the places. In order to make cloth, we tear up animals and plants to use their skins or take out their fibers to spin, weave, and knit. We also cut cloth and sew it up to wear it. Destruction and regeneration happen repeatedly around cloth. The French thinker Georges Bataille once talked about how we humans attained humanity by making wall paintings in the caves; the Earth’s ‘fissures’, in the prehistoric age and how art originated through play by denying the value of labor(*1).

In Aomori, the northern tip of the Honshu island, we have rich and unique cultures, which originated because of the severe winters here. Including Sakiori, Sashiko and Kogin-zashi, and BORO as far as cloth making goes. They reflect people’s lives in rural villages. Making them must have provided people with the joy of doing handwork and being creative with colors and patterns within limits they had as well as challenges against the normative consciousness such as morals connected to gender. I do not mean to lightly refer to those objects as art by no means, but it is true that they teach us the joy of making them and wearing them and tell us many stories.

In this exhibition, derived from “Aomori City Archives Exhibition", the series of exhibitions ACAC had been doing, we will invite three artists based in Asia, who have been doing contemporary art projects, using handcraft, craft, and techniques rooted in traditional cultures. They will exhibit new works inspired by craft objects used among ordinary people, archived in the collection of the Aomori-city Board of Education(*2) and installations using important cultural properties. Guessing from the ideas the artists have shared with me, their works will theme around topics such as female education before the wars, war and firework, connections between the native people of Taiwan and Japan and they will give us opportunities to think about the times our predecessors lived in, which is continuous to our own times.

Gaps are created in layers by the objects themselves, and the expressions born in the process of making those objects. I hope that this exhibition will provide opportunities for us to look into these gaps, go beyond pre-conditioned communities such as nations, races, and families, and connect with others, both who are alive now and who were alive in the past. Because we humans cannot live alone after all.

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*1 Bataille, Georges (1955), Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux or the Birth of Art

*2 The collection of Aomori City History and Ethnography Museum, Keiko-kan, has been transferred to Aomori City and the Cultural Porpoerties Devision of the Aomori City Board of Education. The museum was initially opened as Keiko-kan Foundation in 1977, was transferred to the Aomori City, and became a historical ethnological museum. Among others, Chuzaburo Tanaka acted as the museum director there. It was closed in 2006.

The Beginning of Life/Art: Cloth Weaves Our Times, from Aomori

人は産声を上げるときから死ぬまで、布につつまれています。それは物理的にも精神的にも私たちを守るものであり、何者かを示すものでもあります。世界各地でその土地の風土に合わせ、様々な布が作られ使われてきました。布を作るためには動植物を引き裂いて皮を用いたり、繊維を取り出し紡いだり、織ったり、編んだり。まとうためには布を裁って縫い合わせたりと、破壊と再生が繰り返されています。かつてフランスの思想家ジョルジュ・バタイユは、大地の「裂け目」である洞窟のなかで、先史時代に壁画を描くことで人間性が獲得されたこと、労働の有用性を否定することで遊びとしての芸術が誕生したことを語りました(*1)。
本州の最北端であるここ青森には、厳しい冬があるからこそ生まれた、独自の豊かな文化が存在します。布に関わるものでは、裂織や刺し子、ボロなど。それらは農村の暮らしを反映したものであり、制約のなかで色や柄を工夫する手仕事の楽しみでもあり、時にジェンダーなど規範意識との戦いでもあったでしょう。決してこれらについて、簡単にアートだと言いたいわけではありませんが、作ること身につけることの歓びや、ものが多くを語りかけてくることは事実です。
当館で行ってきた「青森市所蔵作品展」の流れを汲む本展では、アジアを拠点として手芸や工芸、伝統文化の技術をもとに現代美術の活動をするアーティスト3名が、青森市教育委員会が所蔵する民俗資料(*2)から発想した新しい作品、文化財を用いたインスタレーションを展観します。どうやら戦前の女子教育や戦争と花火、台湾原住民族と日本の関わりなど、現在と地続きである人々が生きてきた時代について考えることになりそうです。
ものそれ自体から、そしてそれから生まれた表現からも多層的に開いていく裂け目。この傷口を覗き込むことで、国家や民族、家族といった共同体を超えて、それでもひとりでは生きてゆけない私たちが、時をこえてつながる交感の場になればと思っています。

*1 ジョルジュ・バタイユ『ラスコーあるいは芸術の誕生』1955年
*2 青森市歴史民俗展示館 稽古館が収蔵していたものが、現在は市および市教育委員会文化財課に移管されている。展示館は1977年に財団法人稽古館として開館、1998年青森市に移管された歴史民俗系の博物館。田中忠三郎も館長を務めた。2006年に閉館。