Laurie says:

I very recently received some photographs of the exhibition at the Gallery at Seika University in Kyoto. And also the exhibition descriptive texts in English from the Terra-S gallery.

We are delighted to announce the opening in February, 2022, of Kyoto Seika University’s new gallery, Terra-S, which inherited its role from the university’s long-standing exhibition space, Gallery Fleur. In commemoration of this renovation, we present this exhibition with the theme of “border crossings” in relation to established genres, systems and values. The works by eleven artists here echo with issues such as “gender/history,” “body/identity,” and “place/memory.”

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Professor Emeritus Rebecca Jennison and Curator Ito Mayumi at the entrance of the exhibition. The exhibition was curated by Mayumi-san and curator and Vice Provost Emiko Yoshioka. The curatorial committee included Professor Emeritus Jennison, Professor Emeritus Hiroko Hagiwara and artist Yoshiko Shimada, who is in the gender exhibit.

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From the past to the present, the world has witnessed conflicts, oppression and the solidification and disintegration of social and political order due to controversies over geopolitical boundaries. Today, advanced information technologies and globalization have made the border crossings of people, goods and information a daily occurrence; along with this, infectious diseases, environmental problems, poverty and other transboundary issues have become increasingly apparent.

My photos in the exhibition include 8 photographs from Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes and from Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes, with texts from the models and others.

At the same time, we are connected by the invisible boundaries of customs, cultures, memories and values unique to groups and individuals that construct our identities. In our complex and stressful world, it may be necessary for us to adopt a “border-crossing” attitude that enables us to flow freely, like water, across multiple boundaries as we reexamine ourselves and the world.

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Misako Ichimura looking at Tsumura-san’s painting. Yuki Tsumura depicts Chechen Republic landscapes, her current focus of her imagination with information obtained from maps, movies, and Google Earth Street View, creating her unique work.

In addition to works from the Kyoto Seika University collection by Shuzo AZUCHI GULLIVER, IMAI Kenichi, Laurie Toby EDISON, SHIOTA Chiharu, SHIMADA Yoshiko, and TOMIYAMA Taeko, we introduce works by five guest artists active since the 2000s, ICHIMURA Misako, SHITAMICHI Motoyuki, TANIZAWA Sawako, TSUMURA Yuki and HAN lshu.

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Sawako Tanizawa’s themed stunning paper-cutting installations.

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We hope that this exhibition of works by eleven artists of different backgrounds and generations, working in diverse artistic media, will become a place where the fixed contours of individual and society, self and other, imagination and reality, and gender are gently but unmistakably shaken loose, and where multiple messages and themes that foreshadow our future will resonate. We hope that the reverberations will reach as many people as possible.

Finally, we would like to express our deep gratitude to the artists for their generous support and to the many people who have helped make this exhibition possible

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