17th of mai – 6th of July 2003
RENOVATION WITH A STRANGER
Shigeaki Iwai
( Japan )
Press release
rum46 gladly presents the Japanese artist Shigeaki Iwai
RENOVATION WITH A STRANGER
“This project may be characterized as a
small model of cultural fusion which is
involving compromise, friction and paradox..”
Shigeaki Iwai
Friday, June 27th, 5.00 p.m.: Opening in rum46,
Studsgade 46, 8000 ÅrhusC.
The exhibition will be open from June 28th - July 6th ,
1.00 p.m. - 5.00. p.m.
Sunday, Juni 29th at 7.30 p.m.: Lecture by Shigeaki Iwai
The Japanese artist Shigeaki Iwai lives and works in Tokyo. During the past 6 weeks he has been in Århus – Denmark, and in cooperation with a Lebanese, Danish, and a Danish/Caribian family has created the project Renovation with a stranger.
The main idea behind the project is to invent a room for different cultures to meet and experience each other’s equalities and differences. Every family has given Shigeaki Iwai a piece of furniture which they have been using in their home, and which therefore tells a story about the family, it´s life, and cultural belonging.
The artist and the families are collaborating in rebuilding the piece of furniture, and through this cooperation the possibility for dialogue between different cultural backgrounds emerges.
Shigeaki Iwai tells that in this process he has experienced many special moments, for instance he discovered in the meeting with the Lebanese family, that one of the Japanese patterns he showed to the family, originated in the Middle East. This meeting – where history, tradition and the present connect and are experienced in the present – is an experience he uses in his work.
The renovated furniture becomes the visible manifestation of the exchange, and it reveals how different cultural belongings constantly throughout history are transformed by confrontation and fusion. At the opening, the completed installation of renovated furniture and documentation from the process of exchange will be displayed.
Shigeaki Iwai and Yuan Mor’O Ocampas projects closes the second part of the international artproject Gæstebud – Feast/Hospitality; The Meal, organized by rum46. The commont concern for all 8 projects that constitute The Meal, are the interhuman meetings established by the artists. Meeting that is to be compared with the social action of a meal, as a place for interchange, confrontation and dialogue. Gæstebud – Feast/Hospitality in August enters it’s third and last phase, The Letters of Thanks; a newspaper in which hospitality will be debated by various writers.
Yours faithfully
rum46, Studsgade 46, 8000 Århus C, Denmark
www.rum46.dk
E-mail: hospitality_art@hotmail.com
Phone +45 86208625 / +45 24668915
Feast/Hospitality is supported by: Center for Dansk Billedkunst, Center for kultursamarbejde med Udviklingslandene, Billedkunstraadet, Nordisk Kulturfond, Aarhus Kommunes Kulturpulje, Aarhus Amt, Gevalia, Dan Media, FONA og HUSET
