The Nissan Art Award supports emerging Japanese artists in furthering their careers, by enhancing their presence in the international art world. The award was established in 2013, as part of the company’s 80th anniversary celebrations. Until its third edition in 2017, the award was held every two years. The award aims to celebrate new developments in Japanese contemporary art, encourage debate about visual art, and ultimately contribute towards outlining a history of Japanese contemporary art and artists. Nissan also adds the works of art by awardees to its collection for exhibiting internally and externally, with the aim of providing a point of reference for Japanese contemporary art on the international art scene. Nissan organises and sponsors the awards, while Arts Initiative Tokyo directs and coordinates the programme and curates the award exhibition.
Ishu Han. Sachiko Kazama. Photo: Yoko Asakai. Soichiro Mihara. Nobuko Tsuchiya. Ei Wada. Photo: Florian Voggeneder.
At the end of December 2018, a panel of ten nominators each selected three candidate artists. Comprising curators – ten members of non-profit art organisations – the varied panel members have followed the careers of Japanese artists in a global context. Starting with the 2020 edition of the award, the definition of “Japanese artists” has been broadened to not only Japanese passport holders but also international passport holders who have been based in Japan for more than two years in total. During a selection round in Italy in May 2019, in correspondence with the opening of the 58th Venice Biennale, a jury of renowned international art professionals chose the five finalists for the fourth edition of the Nissan Art Award taking place in 2020. Focusing particularly on their activities in the past two years, the jury selected Tokyo artists Ishu Han, Sachiko Kazama, and Ei Wada, as well as Kyoto-based Soichiro Mihara and Nobuko Tsuchiya from Kanagawa.
The five finalists will receive prize money of one million JPY as well as a further one million JPY to pay for the production of new works of art create for the award exhibition taking place in July 2020 in Yokohama, Nissan’s hometown, held simultaneously with the Yokohama Triennale. During the exhibition, Nissan will announce the Grand Prix winner, who will be awarded the grand prize with a total value of five million yen, w hich includes the finalist prize money and an additional 2 million yen, as well as overseas residency programme, plus a trophy. An Audience Award will be given based on votes from the public.
The international jury included Jury Chair Fumio Nanjo, Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Jean de Loisy, Director, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Professor at the Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media, Singapore; Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong; and Lawrence Rinder, director and chief curator, Berkeley Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California.
The Nissan Art Award 2020 Finalists
Now residing in Tokyo, Ishu Han was born in Shanghai in 1987, and received an MFA in Inter Media Art from Tokyo University of Arts in 2012. Engaging with notions of identity, he works with video, installation, photography and painting. His work has been part of exhibitions at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2014), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015), Japan Society, New York (2016) and the Royal College of Art Gallery, London (2015), among other venues. Commenting on his selection as a finalist for the prize, he said: “I want to continue making art in the same way that I continue to breathe. And in being seen by many others, I hope that my work will also begin breathing of its own accord.”
Tokyo-born and -based Sachiko Kazama (b. 1972) completed the Printmaking course in Musashino Art School in 1996. Her practice is based on an exploration of the past to find the roots of phenomena happening today to create humorous and critical woodblock prints that foreshadow the clouds hanging over the future. She recently has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018), as well as the Yokohama Triennale 2017. Her work is also part of important museum collections such as Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Mori Art Museum, Yokohama Museum of Art and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. She was awarded a prize of Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2019-2021 from Tokyo Metropolitan Government / Tokyo Arts and Space in 2019, and the 8th ‘Tradition créatricé’ Art Award from Japan Arts Foundation in 2016. The artist has commented her selection as an award finalist thus:
Automotive industry is described as a key figure in the economic development of Japan following the Second World War. It is very welcoming that Nissan, which has been the backbone of such development as a domestic car manufacturer, is supporting the activities of artists in this way. Personally, I have been considering the rights and wrongs of modern civilization, but the moment at which human beings exchanged horses for cars, namely mechanization, was a significant turning point that changed human history. If motor shows and international expositions are the grand trade fairs that affirm the victory of modern rationalism, then I think art exhibitions should function as trade shows conveying the importance of things irrational and oblivious to utility and productivity.
Another Tokyo-born and -based artist, Ei Wada (b. 1987) graduated from the Department of Information Design in Tama Art University in 2010. As a student, he started his artistic career in both music and visual art. His performances and installations generate new musical instruments and playing techniques by fusing reel-to-reel tape recorders, CRT televisions and other old electronic appliances with state-of-the-art technologies. Under the name of “Open Reel Ensemble”, the music group he launched in 2009, he has performed live in and outside Japan, at events such as Ars Electronica, Sónar and over 20 other cities including Issey Miyake’s Paris Collection. In 2015, he launched “ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS!”, a new project that reincarnates retired consumer electronics as electromagnetic folk instruments, invents new ways to play music, co-creates orchestras and festivals with diverse people. He was awarded the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival Art Division Excellence Award in 2010, the WIRED Audi INNOVATION AWARD 2016, and the 68th The New Face Award from the Ministry of Education in the Art Encouragement Prizes in 2018.
Born and based in Kanagawa Japan, Nobuko Tsuchiya completed a postgraduate study in fine arts at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2001. Her sculptural works combine familiar objects with discarded materials collected by the artist, creating installations that recall alternative civilisations transcending time and space or strange worlds reminiscent of science fiction. Her work has been recently shown at Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019 and in “Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions” at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019). Her work is also part of important collections such as Leeds Art Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Omar Benjelloun Foundation and others.
Now based in Kyoto, Soichiro Mihara was born in 1980 in Tokyo, and received an MA in Media Expression from the Institute of Advances Media Arts and Science [IAMAS] in 2006. He employs a diverse range of materials – sound, bubbles, radiation, rainbows, microorganisms, moss, air currents and electrons – combining natural phenomena with media technology. He has participating in KENPOKU ART 2016 and Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2016, as well as exhibitions at Kyoto Art Center (2016), Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanian, Berlin (2013) and ZKM, Karlsruhe (2012). He has received awards from festivals such as Ars Electronica and Japan Media Arts Festival, as well as participated since 2013 in artist-in-residence programmes in eight countries such as the Arctic, rainforest, militarised border and bioart lab, from urban to rural environments.
A co-author of Haptics Hack (Asahi Press, 2016), he has been recently engaging in maintaining and restoring sound sculpture and new media art works. He commented his selection thus:
For the past 15 years, I have continued to design and implement media technology directed towards the environment in order to pursue art that serves a function. The fickle relationship between the natural world and human artifice can bring us to vividly sense our environment, from global-scale phenomena such as the sun and ecosystems, to the micro world of microorganisms and electrons. However, the art I create is contingent upon these phenomena, and as such must also be accepting of situations where they are too delicate or do not occur. … I hope to use this fortuitous opportunity to create a new work, through which I will share a new way of enjoying an environmental world with the audience.
We can expect a great diversity of work at the Nissan Art Award 2020 exhibition, from performance and installation to more traditional woodcut and sculpture, as well as many contemporary issues being addressed and explored. Jury member Suhanya Raffel has commented in the press release:
The five selected artists are a snapshot of diversity of voice, certainly in terms of issues that artists are dealing with, not just in Japan but in the world. It was also very nice to see ideas of recycling, sustainability, and environmental alertness being addressed.