PRESS RELEASE

2022.5.30

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

MOT Annual 2022
My justice might be someone else’s pain
Sat. 16 July 2022 – Sun. 16 October 2022
The MOT Annual is a group exhibition that highlights diverse aspects of contemporary art and elicits inquiryand discussion. The 18th edition of the MOT Annual features four artists, OOKUBO Ari, KUDO Haruka,
TAKAGAWA Kazuya, and RACHI Akira. With language and narrative as points of departure, these artists
explore how we can give visible shape to people and things forgotten in our era and by our society, andhow we can focus in sharper resolution on the complex, institutionalized environment that envelops ourlives.

We live in a senseless world of pandemics and rampant unprovoked attacks, and it seems that basic definitionsof right and wrong are increasingly blurred. How can we examine differences between people of varying

backgrounds, and see the misunderstandings and paradoxes that arise from these differences as relevant tous? Is it possible to tolerate and forgive others with whom we share little or no understanding? Language is ameans of sharing culture, but at the same time, cultural disparities can be sources of conflict. Meanwhile, thatwhich cannot be described in words tends to be forgotten. This exhibition showcases artists’ endeavors toconfront the challenges of storytelling and description, and to seek out alternative narratives.

Artists
OOKUBO Ari / KUDO Haruka / TAKAGAWA Kazuya / RACHI Akira(Videos and installations include new works by each artist)

Information
Exhibition Period

Sat. 16 July – Sun. 16 October 2022

ClosedMondays (except 18 Jul., 19 Sep., 10 Oct.), 19 Jul., 20 Sep., 11 Oct.

Opening Hours

10:00－18:00 (Tickets available until 30 minutes before closing.)

Admission

Adults－1,300 yen / University & College Students, Over 65－900yen/High School & Junior High School Students－500 yen /Elementary School Students & Younger－Free

Venue

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Exhibition Gallery 3F

Organizers

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundationfor History and Culture

Curator

Mihoko Nishikawa (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

Contact+81-50-5541-8600 (Hello Dial)

Concurrent Exhibitions“Jean Prouvé, constructive imagination”“MOT Collection: Rewinding the Collection 2nd”
Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Public Relations
Kudo/ Sunanaga/ Uchibori
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp
TEL: +81-3-5245-1134
UR L ： https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/* All Programs are subject to change.

1Highlights
New works and installations reconfigured for this exhibition
Each of the participating artists has created work specifically for this exhibition. Viewers will engage with theuniquely up-to-the-minute character of contemporary artworks created through ongoing processes ofexploration.
TAKAGAWA Kazuya is working with multiple collaborators, including the rapper FUNI, to produce a new videoin which he tries his hand at rapping. What do we gain or lose when we express our emotions in words? This
documentary will explore the question while tracing the artist’s own personal experiences.
KUDO Haruka presents a new installation incorporating interviews with people currently living independently
after leaving support facilities for persons with disabilities, with the former Eugenic Protection Law and themass murder at a care facility in Sagamihara, which she has dealt with in previous works, as underlying themes.
This overlaps with her interrogation of the history of women, including the artist herself, who pursue art careers
while raising children.
OOKUBO Ari compiles a new narrative in which multiple stories and time-frames intersect, in an installation
inspired by 13 of her past works. By reconfiguring these, she conveys the ways in which recombination oftimelines and interchanges of subject and object in a story imply the possibility of alternative narratives in any
given account.
RACHI Akira presents a version of work, previously shown in 2020 at his first solo exhibition in a decade,focusing on a passage used in a literacy test that was a prerequisite for voting rights in the US state of Louisiana
in the 1960s. Here he reproduces this work, which reflects on invisible forms of prejudice, and positions reading,writing and pronunciation as arbitrary pretexts for discrimination, in the public space of a museum.

Imagining Untold Lives and Engaging with the Forgotten
Some of the works in this exhibition deal with issues that society tends to avoid discussing. Here they are
addressed in ways that differ from their description or evaluation in factual terms in the news or in criticaldiscourse. The artists present us with discoveries they have made while deepening engagement with theirsubjects and subjecting their own values to disruption by experimenting with the effects of language on thepsyche, or imagining the lives of individuals not easily represented in historical narratives. Their stances –traversing boundaries between self and other and seeking to engage with marginalized issues and forgotten
entities, at times rendering them abstract through fiction and symbol – demonstrate the potential ofstorytelling and creation, and of resistance to erasure from collective historical memory.

Ongoing Artistic Practices Not Swayed by Art-World Trends
While introducing new developments in art, the MOT Annual series also serves as a venue for diverse works
that cannot be associated with any one trend, and which are often overlooked. From this perspective, thisexhibition sheds light on artists who are remarkably accomplished but have not exhibited extensively atmuseums thus far.
Artists’ practices are nurtured in the context of their daily lives, and do not always manifest themselves in theform of artworks. Whether or not they have venues at which to exhibit, artists continue to pursue their own
concerns, studies, and creative processes. This year’s edition of the MOT Annual offers opportunities to imagine
and experience stories outside the bounds of familiar language, and a venue for sharing the explorations andpractices of present-day artists with a wider audience.
Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Public Relations
Kudo/ Sunanaga/ Uchibori
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp
TEL: +81-3-5245-1134
UR L ： https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/* All Programs are subject to change.

2Artists’ Biographies
1. TAKAGAWA Kazuya
Born in 1986, Takagawa graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Tokyo Zokei University of the Arts andcompleted the Graduate School of Fine Arts program at Tokyo University of the Arts. Since 2007, he has
participated in group exhibitions and residencies in Japan and abroad, working primarily with video. Past
projects include a filmed dialogue between Takagawa and a psychotherapist who pretends to be Takagawa
himself, and experimental videos and projects in which consensus is formed among strangers. He is concernedwith the effects of language on the human psyche, and has collected the words of depression patients and warsurvivors. Takagawa’s new work will be a documentary which explores verbal self-expression, and its effects, incollaboration with the rapper FUNI and others.

1 TAKAGAWA Kazuya, ASK THE SELF, 2015

2 TAKAGAWA Kazuya, CONSENSUS, 2014

2. KUDO Haruka
Born in 1977, Kudo graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Tokyo University of the Arts. She is currently
a member of the research collective Hitotohito. She began as a painter, but since the late 2010s has beencreating installations combining text, objects, and video based on her research into social issues andimagination directed toward those unable to speak. Kudo questions the ways in which institutions and laws
affect people’s value systems and are internalized. Building on previous works dealing with the passage of theformer Eugenic Protection Law and the mass murder at a care facility in Sagamihara, here she presents aninstallation reflecting the history of Lake Sagami and the social structures surrounding resources, welfare, andlabor that this history brings into focus, as well as the voices and perspectives of persons who society renders
invisible.

3 KUDO Haruka, Installation view of The scenery which I saw if

I was alive, 2017Contact

4 KUDO Haruka, Installation view of See the World from theBottom of Lakeside, 2020

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Public Relations
Kudo/ Sunanaga/ Uchibori
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp
TEL: +81-3-5245-1134
UR L ： https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/* All Programs are subject to change.

33. OOKUBO Ari
Born in 1974, Ookubo graduated from the Department of Painting of Musashino Art University, and completed
the Certificate Course in Art at the Goldsmiths, University of London and the Postgraduate Course at Chelsea
College of Arts and Design. Since the early 2000s, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions and hadsolo shows in Japan and elsewhere, presenting works based on fictions derived from her own dreams andexperiences in the form of performances, printed matter, and installations consisting of text and objects. By
illuminating the ambiguity and multiplicity of memories and narratives, Ookubo endeavors to engage with thepresence of things suspended or obliviated amid the chaos of history. In this exhibition, she reconfigures herown past work and compiles a new narrative through memories and objects invoked on a natural history
museum-like time scale.

5 OOKUBO Ari, Installation view of The 17 reasons for putting stones inthe bread, 2013 (Photograph by AZEGAMI Sakiko)

6 OOKUBO Ari, Installation view of I’m the Creator of this World, You’re
One of the Materials Existing in the Universe, 2018

4. RACHI Akira
Born in 1980, Rachi graduated from the Photography Course at Arts University Bournemouth. He producesworks based on research related to modern and contemporary history, especially voting systems, and also
engages in artistic practice through everyday acts such as walking and asking questions. These practices, which
are at times developed into texts, photographs, and performances, reveal the political nature of institutions
and representations and the potential for recurring reminders of past events. schibboleth, which addresses thehistory of discrimination based on differences in speech, is a meditation on vague and unreasonably imposed
dividing lines, those who create them and those who are at their mercy. He reproduces the previously exhibited
work for the MOT Annual.

7 RACHI Akira, Ephemera for schibboleth, 2020-21 (Photograph byKAWAMURA Masumi)

Contact

8 RACHI Akira, 15:50 (partial installation view of schibboleth) 2020-21（Photograph by KAWAMURA Masumi）

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Public Relations
Kudo/ Sunanaga/ Uchibori
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp
TEL: +81-3-5245-1134
UR L ： https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/* All Programs are subject to change.

4

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1

TAKAGAWA Kazuya, ASK THE SELF, 2015

3

KUDO Haruka, Installation view of The scenery which I saw if I was alive, 2017

2

4

TAKAGAWA Kazuya, CONSENSUS, 2014

KUDO Haruka, Installation view of See the World from the Bottom of Lakeside, 2020

5OOKUBO Ari, Installation view of The 17 reasons for putting stones in the bread, 2013

6OOKUBO Ari, Installation view of I’m the Creator of this World, You’re One of the Materials Existing inthe Universe, 2018RACHI Akira, Ephemera for schibboleth, 2020-21 (Photograph by KAWAMURA Masumi)
RACHI Akira, 15:50 (partial installation view of schibboleth) 2020-21

78Contact(Photograph by AZEGAMI Sakiko)（Photograph by KAWAMURA Masumi）
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Public Relations
Kudo/ Sunanaga/ Uchibori
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp
TEL: +81-3-5245-1134
UR L ： https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/* All Programs are subject to change.

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