Press Release

KANTEN 観展:
The Limits of History

apexart - nycCurated by Eimi Tagore-Erwin

On view:
March 24 - May 20, 2023		
Tues. - Sat. 11am - 6pm
Opening Reception: March 24, 6-8 pm
Location:
291 Church Street, NYC, and 3D Online		

Bontaro Dokuyama, My Anthem, 2019
Image courtesy of LEESAYA © Bontaro DOKUYAMA

Featuring work by:
Bontaro Dokuyama - Taro Furukata - Soni Kum - Kyun-Chome - Ken Okiishi - Haji Oh Motoyuki Shitamichi - The East Asia Image Collection, Lafayette College
KANTEN 観展 is a play on the Japanese kanji for 観点 kanten, perspective, and 展覧会 tenrankai, art exhibition—
coming together to indicate an exhibition of perspectives. KANTEN examines Japan’s expansionism during theAsia Pacific war from an array of viewpoints, exposing the considerable ways in which the past can be visualized
and remembered.
The seven artists featured in this multimedia exhibition navigate, reevaluate, and process generational memory—
creating artworks that delve into complex issues that have long been established as “history.” Together,
these artists demonstrate very distinctive approaches to both the material and immaterial traces of wartime
displacement and imperial subjectivization, the blurring of national boundaries, as well as the role of the US in
the aftermath of the Asia Pacific War. By juxtaposing their work with a collection of original Japanese wartime
postcards, KANTEN aims to reveal the limits of memory, narrative, and testimony.
With nationalism and neoliberal patriotism on the rise around the globe, it is becoming more urgent to explore
art’s power to both construct and dismantle national histories. As one of the first US exhibitions on this subject,
KANTEN broadens the resistance against an enduring reluctance to confront the underside of history—especiallywhen it paints a disturbing picture.

KANTEN 観展: The Limits of History is an apexart NYC Open Call Exhibition. For more information on
the exhibition and related events, email visit apexart.org/tagore-erwin.php or email ash.hagerstrand@
apexart.org.
Eimi Tagore-Erwin is a doctoral candidate of East Asian Studies at New York University and an emerging curator. Her research focus
is contemporary Transpacific art engaging with colonial history, memory, and politics. She is a curator at Alison Bradley Projects anda 2023 Curatorial Fellow at the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation. She was a 2021 Wikipedia Fellow for PoNJA-Genkon and Asia
Art Archive in America, where she focused on Japanese artists who have faced censorship.
apexart’s program supporters past and present include the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Kettering Family Foundation,
the National Endowment for the Arts, the Buhl Foundation,Bloomberg Philanthropies, Spencer Brownstone, the Kenneth A. Cowin
Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., William Talbott Hillman Foundation/Affirmation Arts Fund,the Fifth Floor Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,
and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, public funds from CreativeEngagement, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administeredby LMCC, funds from NYSCA Electronic Media/Film in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund, with the support ofGovernor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support ofthe New York State Legislature.

#KANTENTheLimitsofHistory

291 church street, new york, ny 10013
t +1 212 431 5270 www.apexart.org