New Artist Picks
For some time, the Yokohama Museum of Art has carried out a program to support young artists and provide opportunities for them to show their work. Beginning in 2014, this program will be called "New Artist Picks" (NAP), and the exhibitions will be held in the museum’s Art Gallery, etc.
This year, as we make a new start, we are pleased to present a solo exhibition for TANAKA Nozomi, winner of the VOCA Prize at "VOCA 2014."
TANAKA was born in Miyagi prefecture in 1989, and is presently enrolled in a doctoral program in the Graduate School of Art and Design at Tohoku University of Art and Design. She is engaged in research on the culture and religion of various regions focusing around Yamagata and Akita prefectures, the gods that have been worshiped in those areas since ancient times, traditional performing arts such as "Kagura" and festivals, and folklore related to agriculture and everyday life. The artworks she makes are based on these studies. She creates an artistic world beyond ordinary space and time populated by small, frisky rabbits and invites the viewer to travel into this imaginary realm.
For this exhibition in Yokohama, a port city by the sea, she is showing a new series in which she depicts conditions in the towns and villages of northeastern Japan that she has visited in the style of ship paintings "funa-e". A large number of these ship paintings will be brought together in the Yokohama Museum of Art. The title of the exhibition, "Shiotsuchi," is the name of a god who appears in the "Nihon Shoki" (Chronicles of Japan). "Shiotsuchi" was known for his profound knowledge of the sea and was associated with controlling ocean currents and the manufacture of salt. He acted as a guide for ocean voyages of the gods. On this occasion, this guardian deity will guide the ships that Tanaka has painted to Yokohama. Drawings and documentation of the creative process will be exhibited along with the paintings. We hope museum visitors will enjoy seeing these new works by an energetic and talented young artist.
