Press Release

The Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama: Clear-skies Country will be an international art festival held in the northern half of Okayama Prefecture, Japan in the autumn of 2024. The art director is Yuko Hasegawa, the director of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, who will be directing her first art festival in Japan. A total of 40 artists (39 groups) will participate.

International ongoing exhibitions

Forest Festival of Arts Okayama

5 municipalities in Okayama Prefecture (Japan)

28.09 - 24.11.2024

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Hasegawa describes her concept for the festival as follows:

“While looking to the future, the festival does not depend on sophisticated digital technology or a glut of information. Instead, it detoxes these elements and gives full play to sensibility, knowledge updating, and idea proposals. The enchantment of forests is sure to induce an awakening to a new ecology.”

Features of this festival

Even in the context of Japan, where many art festivals are held, this festival is a unique one, in that it takes forest ecology as its theme and sets forth diverse forms of symbiosis between nature and humanity in five large areas.

It is an art festival showcasing a neo-capitalism that draws on natural capital and remakes it into new capital together with experts and local residents.

The festival encompasses a wide variety of sites including forests, waterfalls, hot springs, highlands, caverns, historical post roads, Japanese-style gardens, and old Western-style buildings. It offers site-specific works of art and projects by various creators and professionals such as artists, architects, flower arrangers, designers, performers, and researchers.

Anri Sala provides a new interactive experience with use of sound and light in a cavern containing a waterfall with a drop of 50 meters. At the end of another cavern appears a crimson nirvana produced by NINAGAWA Mika with EiM. A display at the Nagi MOCA manifests Arata Isozaki’s bold vision for the marriage of art and architecture. These are just some of the works shown at the festival.

There is another project for the preparation of cuisine, produced by a local chef who has won award in an international competition.

Outline

Title: Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama: Clear-skies Country

Festival period: Saturday, September 28–Sunday, November 24

Venue: 5 municipalities in Okayama Prefecture, Japan

Art Director: Yuko Hasegawa

Organizer: Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama: Clear-skies Country Executive Committee, Ryuta Ibaragi (Governor of Okayama Prefecture)

Artists

Tarek Atoui, Paola Besana, Bianca Bondi, Masanobu Emi, Leandro Erlich, Lucila Gradín, Katsukichi Higashi, Shiori Higashiyama, AKI INOMATA, Arata Isozaki, Umesh P K, Atsunobu Katagiri, Moe Kato, Hideaki Kawashima, Rinko Kawauchi, Kimsooja, Chiharu Koda, Chien-Chung Liao, Michael Lin, Yuka Mori, Mirai Moriyama, Ernesto Neto, NINAGAWA Mika with EiM, Saburo Ota, Smitha G S, Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani, Anri Sala, Kazuyo Sejima, Muhannad Shono, Yuko Someya, Keita Sugiura, Jukan Tateisi, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Yoshihiko Ueda, Asim Waqif, Yuna Yagi, Giacomo Zaganelli, and more.

Festival 28 September - 24 November 2024. Venue: 5 municipalities in Okayama Prefecture, Japan.

Leandro Erlich, The Nature Above (conceptual drawing), 2024.