A collaborative project between Ura Ayaka-who creates works that investigate relationships between things based on participatory performances that use words and bodies-and Koyama Yuya-who works through video and performances to approach the body as existing in gradations between the public and the private. Together with teenagers and twenty-somethings, Ura and Koyama conduct multifaceted research on art, art festivals, and society. Participants acquire the art of thinking for themselves and the skills necessary for communicating for themselves, publishing or posting their ideas about the Aichi Triennale 2022.

Since April 2022, the participants have used Art Lab Aichi (ALA) as their base for researching art, mainly by artists who are participating in Aichi Triennale 2022, and for connecting art works with their own experiences by exploring in depth, both linguistically and physically. The project incorporated a series of lectures by the Triennales curators, and learned about how art festivals are put together. In one workshop, participants conducted experiments to see how they were being influenced and how they might influence others in a public place. Confronted with a variety of ways of thinking proposed by artists, participants approached the relationship between art, society, and self-sometimes from a bird's-eye view and sometimes as an active player. Through such weekly meetings, participants learned how to connect themselves with the elements they were studying.

At the exhibition venue, participants who have gone through these experiences give workshops, organize online events featuring participating artists and curators, and implement other means of sharing various kinds of information about the art festival. Archival records of past activities are also released.

This project addresses one of the Learning Programʼs objectives: By learning through art, every one of us can acquire the power to grapple with the unforeseeable events that will surely continue to occur, to live through the present moment.

Selected Works & Awards

Ura Ayaka:
In addition to examining the nature of social gatherings, she has organized numerous workshops and other participatory works. She has also been involved in the project management for “female artists meeting,” a network for women in the art world, and is the administrator of the CSLAB.

Koyama Yuya:
By extracting from and combining observations of how we interact, he has been exploring the future through visualizing and deconstructing the body that is dependent upon existing frameworks.

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Ura Ayaka＋Koyama Yuya, Measure it, Get in Between, Break Out, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio