The 15th shiseido art egg
mezzanine

Duration: November 23 (Tue) – December 19 (Sun), 2021
Weekdays: 11:00–19:00
Sundays and holidays: 11:00–18:00

Bell button

Closed Mondays (including national holidays falling on Monday)
Organized by Shiseido Company, Limited

Bell*Content and schedule are subject to change dependingon the status of Covid 19 infection.

Light“shiseido art egg” is an open-call program that offers up-and-coming artists the chance to exhibit at the Shiseido Gallery, now dedicated toWall, door, acrylic plates

the discovery and creation of new kinds of beauty for over a century. This 15th edition of the program received 243 applications from all overJapan, including, once again, a large number of extraordinarily creative proposals making optimal use of the Shiseido Gallery exhibition
spaces. From these, the artists Umi Ishihara, Mika Kan, and Kayako Nakashima were chosen for their unconventional takes on today’s newvalues and aesthetics, with solo exhibitions by these artists being staged in turn at the Shiseido Gallery from September to December.
All three artists came up with proposals that subtly interrogate the dangers of these times of uncertainty and instability, look at potential
sources of hope, and encourage us to rethink conventional notions of “the art experience.” Perhaps their efforts to share, by exhibiting,experiences that only art can offer, in turn offer valuable clues for the generation of new values at a time when the future is so hard to see.

Reception

The 15th shiseido art egg’s third exhibiting artist, Kayako Nakashima, has used the whole of the Shiseido Gallery to create a single installation,
titled Hedgehogs. Nakashima makes works that interrogate the relationality of people and places, taking walls and boundaries as her motifs.
For this exhibition she has installed a massive wall dividing the large and small rooms of the gallery from each other. The smaller space is abrightly lit, the larger space dark, and although those on the other side cannot be seen, a door in the wall suggests the possibility of passage
through. Installed on the landing above the brighter room is a bell button that when pressed, causes a bell to sound across the venue. The wallon the dark side is decorated with wallpaper, giving the space the relaxing feel of a bedroom, yet are pierced by multiple pieces of acrylic
resembling shards of glass, their insertion points allowing light to filter through from the bright side, generating at once both a sense ofviolence, and of beauty. Nakashima wants spectators to link the viewing experience, with its wallpaper, bell tone, and acrylic fragments, totheir personal memories.
While the pandemic has given a positive slant to terms connected with isolation and solitude such as “stay home” and “ohitorisama” (lit. “partyof one”), online communication able to occur anyplace and anytime has flourished. Yet it has also increased the number of settings exposing
people’s unconscious assumptions and biases. In today’s world, where maintaining the right distance from others is trickier than ever, whatrole do walls play? Hopefully the experience of imagining the other side of the wall, as conveyed by light and sound, will prompt visitors here
to ponder afresh the nature of communication.

Kayako Nakashima

1990 Born in Kyoto PrefectureAward2020 PhD, Intermedia Art, Tokyo University of the Arts

2017 Tokyo Arts and Space : Exchange Residency Program,

Currently lives in Akita Prefecture

Treasure Hill Taipei artist village (Taipei, Taiwan)
2016 Ryo Sawayama Award : Open call for art project ideas 2016

Selected solo exhibition
2021 “Talk to the wall, Kayako Nakashima” galerie 16 (Kyoto)

Collection2013 [Transition House] (Takami Island, Kagawa, Japan)

Selected group exhibitions

2016 [Time falls] (Takami Island, Kagawa, Japan)

2021 “SUZU 2020＋ OKU-NOTO TRIENNALE” (Ishikawa)2019 “FREMANTLE BIENNALE 2019” (Perth, Australia)

Commission work

2019 “Kehai to Sonzai” A-Lab (Hyogo)2019 Garden City Kokura2019 “Fault line art festival” (Hualien, Taiwan)
With the barriers and borders dividing things as my motif, I make works that take as their departure point involvement with place. For thisexhibition I have composed a space on the theme of desire and violence in our relationships with other people.
In a manner regardless of the spectator's intent, some kind of sign – a bell to summon someone, light flickering through a door, an incursionof light – is sent to the other side of a giant wall. Just as it is not easy for us to communicate, the reaction to the sign sent cannot be seen; attimes the sign will be ignored, or have an unexpectedly violent quality, depending on the environment of the person on the receiving end. It is
unclear whether the huge wall dividing the gallery is a protective barrier keeping out invaders, or a prison wall keeping something in.
It strikes me that as society has become more open to different values over time, along with becoming familiar with more diverse ways ofthinking, and gaining an opportunity to understand each other better, there are now more situations in which we can unconsciously cause hurt
to others. Rather than tearing down the barriers separating ourselves from others, my interest lies in exploring the kind of dialogue we can2018 “Compiling behaviors, digesting actions”
Creator-in-Residence 2018 Exhibition
Tokyo Arts and Space Gallery (Tokyo)
2018 “Sculpture by the sea 2018” (Perth, Australia)
2017 “Treasure Hill residency artists solo exhibition 2017” season 4(Taipei, Taiwan)
2017 Discover premium green “Tea plantation viewing 2017”(Kyoto)2017 “Rokko Meets Art 2017” (Kobe)

engage in, using our imaginations, to surmount those barriers.

2017 “Takamijima-Kyoto: On the Far Side of Daily Life”

About the title

2017 “Sculpture by the sea 2017” (Perth, Australia)

Gallery FLEUR (Kyoto)

The title “Hedgehogs” is taken from the similarity between the shards of acrylic piercing the wall, and the spines of a hedgehog, and the phrase“hedgehog's dilemma” from Schopenhauer's parable. This describes how in the cold of winter, a group of hedgehogs attempt to huddle
together to keep warm, but being stabbed by each other's spines, keep moving closer to and further away from each other, and is used toexpress the psychological conflict of seeking an appropriate distance from others. The story originally featured a different creature, theporcupine, but the two animals seem to be used interchangeably, due to their similar prickly appearance. I imagine the hedgehog was none
too happy about being bundled so simplistically into the same category as their larger quilled cousins.
Kayako Nakashima

2016 “Open call for art project ideas 2016” ,Hiroshima city museum of contemporary art (Hiroshima)2016 “Setouchi Triennale 2016” (Kagawa)2015 “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2015” (Niigata)2014 “Art Setouchi 2014” (Kagawa)2013 “Setouchi Triennale 2013” (Kagawa)2012 “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2012” (Niigata)

Kayako Nakashima Website