8th Yokohama Triennale Announces First Wave of Participating Artists

Since its founding in 2001, the Yokohama Triennale has explored the relationship between Japan and the world, the individual and society, and re-examined the social role of art from various perspectives in response to a constantly changing world. The 8th Yokohama Triennale (Yokohama Triennale 2023) is scheduled to run from March 15 to June 9, 2024, under the theme “Wild Grass: Our Lives.”

The first line-up introduces 67 artists and groups, 30 exhibiting their work for the first time in Japan and 21 presenting new works. The exhibition focuses on the fragile and vulnerable figure of the individual who, like wild grass, strives to stand firm in an age of uncertain prospects. Here are some of the featured artists.

Joar Nango was born in 1979 in Alta, Norway, and currently lives and works in Romsa/Tromsø. Nango is a descendant of the Sami, a nomadic tribe living in the Arctic Circle, and is known for works that explore new ways of coexistence between humans and nature in times of resource scarcity and climate change.

Pippa Garner was born in Evanston, Illinois (USA), and currently lives and works in California. As a transgender woman, Garner has been questioning society about the nature of diversity and breaking free from stereotypes by publicly presenting her transition as an art project. Her works are based on personal experiences of living with the images of men and women created by advertisements and consumer society.

Lungiswa Gqunta was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1990 and now resides in Cape Town. She uses everyday objects in her three-dimensional works to express the inequalities resulting from patriarchy and colonialism in South African society. For this exhibition, Gqunta plans to create a dynamic piece out of barbed wire.

The Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga) collective was founded in 2012 in Lviv, Ukraine. The group is engaged in collaborative projects and collective work. Open Group will present, for the first time in Japan, a work that realistically portrays the current state of war and conflict by interviewing Ukrainian citizens who fled to a refugee camp in Lviv.

SIDE CORE is a Japanese collective formed in 2012. Its members include Sakie Takasu, Toru Matsushita, and Futoshi Nishihiro. The collective has been developing projects from the perspective of street culture, such as graffiti and performance, using the streets and underground spaces as their stage. For this exhibition, they will present new works in three venues: the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Former Daiichi Bank Yokohama Branch, and BankART KAIKO.

Other announced artists are Keizo Kitajima, Yasumasa Morimura, Yoshinori Niwa, Lieko Shiga, Taeko Tomiyama, Susan Cianciolo, Larry Clark, Josh Klein, South Ho, and Po-Chih Huang. The complete list of artists can be found here.