Outline
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, since its opening in 1989, has continued to hold Open Call based exhibitions to support the artists’ creative activities. The museum’s Open Call has changed its style several times for the better, providing support for the artists and achieving an attractive form of exhibition for the visitors. This time, as we celebrate the museum’s renewal opening, our Open Call changes again to “Hiroshima MoCA FIVE.” We seek a proposal that opens the diverse energy that contemporary art carries.
Application
Theme”Renewal”
- The theme for the Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 23/24 is “Renewal.” How to interpret the word is up to the applicant. We look forward to challenging plans that match this year’s theme.
- There is no restriction on genres (painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, etc.) and materials (wood, metal, porcelain, etc.) of the proposed work
- The proposed work must be exhibited throughout the exhibition period unless the work is in the form of a performance. The performance-based work must be performed on the first day of the exhibition, and the performance needs to be sharable, in some way, with the visitors throughout the exhibition.
- One artist or a group can make one proposal.
- The proposed work must be original and previously unpublished.
- The exhibition space for the selected works is Gallery B-1, corridor, and approach plaza.
- Download the application guideline and form from the website and send the filled form via email or post.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023—17:00 JST on Monday, December 18 (must arrive within the application period)
Hiroshima MoCA FIVE
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
1-1 Hijiyama-koen, Minami-ku, Hiroshima 732-0815
E-mail: hiroshimamocafive2324@gmail.com
- The proposals will be screened by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art curators and a special jury.
Special July for 23/24 Tomoko Yabumae (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
- The result will be announced on January 23, 2024, on the museum’s website.
- Five artists/groups will be selected.
400,000 JPY will be awarded to each artist or group.
- Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Award/Special Jury Award
After the installment of the work, the juries will select one artist/group each for a special prize (Award: 200,000 JPY)
- Documentation images of the exhibition will be provided to the selected artists.
- "Where to exhibit the work and how" should be discussed with the museum curators.
- Installing and dismantling works should be done by the artist or a person arranged by the artist. The museum will support the installing as well.
- The artist is responsible for preparing the necessary equipment to exhibit artworks, such as frames, pedestals, video-related equipment, etc.
- The museum will provide information on local hotels if the artist needs to stay in Hiroshima during the installation period. Please ask the museum in advance.
Guest House akicafe inn, Guest House COCO Hiroshima
Selection Results
After an in-house selection process by the director, deputy director, and curators of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and a special selection by Ms. Tomoko Yabumae (curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), the following five ideas were selected from among the 326 entries received.
Hirai Koki, Cities as inkwell, HIROSHIMA/KURE
Hozumi Eri, To Preserve The Memory (tentative)
Nishikawa Shigeru, Sealed Building -Atomic Bomb Dome-
Tsugawa Nana, settler (tentative)
Urakami Mana, Tie while floating (tentative)
Special Jury Statement
Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 23/24 is the first public open-call exhibition held by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art since its reopening following renovations. Of the five artists selected from among 326 applicants, it is apparently a coincidence that four have connections to Hiroshima. Upon hearing their life stories, however, it seems less coincidental than inevitable. The atomic bombing, a historical event that intersects with the artists’ lives to varying extents, has fostered an environment that one imagines is fertile ground for creative expression, with individuals’ unique personal experiences expanding to connect to universal themes.
The exhibition’s theme of renewal, also explored in Hiroshima MoCA’s special reopening exhibition
Before / After, covers wide critical territory, encompassing various moments of revival and restarting in the course of people’s lives, reconfiguration of concepts of time, reconstruction from the devastation of the atomic bomb, reassessment of existing frameworks including that of modernity, and visions for the future. Among the diverse entries dealing with various issues, the work of Hirai Koki, who won both the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Award and the Special Jury Award, exerts a tranquil presence yet has a dynamic impact with its maximal broadening of the exhibition theme’s critical scope. His evenly weighted hand-drawn lines guide us toward reflection on transport and movement, the relationship between Hiroshima and the nearby city of Kure, the differences in their development as military centers, and the structures of modernity that have fostered further disparities between the two cities.
Tsugawa Nana’s work addresses the issue of emigrants from Hiroshima. While depicting their fresh starts in new lands, she skillfully adapts her earlier drawings to themes that have subsequently emerged, presenting “new landscapes” that take on even more compelling authenticity. Nishikawa Shigeru’s painting makes a powerful and lasting impression, using the Atomic Bomb Dome, currently under renovation, to symbolize a point in time where past and present, destruction and reconstruction converge. Hozumi Eri’s heartfelt work invokes the memory of a sculpture once installed at Hiroshima Station but lost in the maelstrom of urban development, with the artist’s own hand bearing witness to art’s transcendence of time and the material world. Urakami Mana breathes new life into antique photographs found at flea markets, infusing freshness into a medium frequently associated with the dead through her innovative selection and presentation of photographs resembling memories slipping through the cracks of time.
All of the works of these artists demonstrate powerful resistance against time’s irreversible flow toward destruction and death, and collectively, they form a truly outstanding group exhibition. While resonating with various events unfolding in our world today, the exhibition delivers an experience that reaffirms contemporary art’s power to improve our lives, and ultimately, to provoke thoughtful exploration that can prevent the tragic recurrence of war.
Yabumae Tomoko (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Closing Report
Organizer’s Greeting
Special Jury Statement
Installation View
Artists / Works
Urakami Mana
Tsugawa Nana
Nishikawa Shigeru
Hirai Koki
Hozumi Eri
Appendix
Process
Publications
Overview
Schedule
Archive
