Ishigaki Katsuko "Familiar Landscapes"
Feb 22 — Mar 22, 2025
MISA SHIN GALLERY is pleased to announce Familiar Landscapes, a solo exhibition by Ishigaki Katsuko, on view from Saturday, February 22, to Saturday, March 22, 2025.
Ishigaki, born in Okinawa in 1967, is an artist who attempt to capture the shifting landscapes of Okinawa, including U.S. military bases, military housing, and postwar architecture and cityscapes. For a generation who grow up seeing U.S. military bases as an integral part of life, these landscapes coexist in parallel with the pristine natural scenery of Ishigaki Island’s lagoons, where the artist spent her early childhood.
In 2008, Ishigaki relocated her studio to Koza (the former name of Okinawa City), adjacent to Kadena Air Base, the largest U.S. military installation in the Far East. During her daily commute from her home in Naha, the base gradually became part of her everyday scenery. Over the course of a decade, Ishigaki began to paint the sight in an attempt to commit it to memory.
Okinawa comprises just 0.6% of Japan’s total land area, yet it hosts approximately 70% of the U.S. military facilities in the country. While some land previously devoted to military bases has been returned and repurposed into new urban developments, the landscapes surrounding these bases remain in constant flux. Reflecting on this, Ishigaki notes, “If the day ever comes when all this land is completely returned, these landscapes will vanish. I don’t want to pretend they were never there.” Through flat colors and deliberate brushstrokes, Ishigaki captures military facilities bathed in uniform sunlight, foreign residential quarters framed by fences, traditional homes left untouched by development, and weathered concrete houses with peeling paint. The familiar landscapes that we take for granted in Okinawa has a different meaning from the transformation of landscapes through scrap-and-build that has been taking place in every other city in recent years.
Ishigaki’s landscape of Okinawa invite viewers to reflect on the tension between mournfulness and brightness that defines the region’s complex realities. Her work encourages a reconsideration of the everyday landscapes that shift with history and the evocative power they hold. On the opening day of the exhibition, we will host a special gallery talk with Mr. Taro Amano, Chief Curator of the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, joined by the artist.
EXHIBITED ARTWORKS
ARTISTS
VENUE
- URL
- https://www.misashin.com/
- 住所
- 〒106-0047 東京都港区南麻布 3-9-11 パインコーストハイツ 1F
- 開館時間
- 12:00 — 19:00
- 休館日
- Sun・Mon・Holiday
- 入館料
- 無料
NOTES
February 22 - March 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 22, 17:00-19:00
Gallery Talk : Ishigaki Katsuko x Amano Taro(Chief Curator, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)
Saturday, February 22, 17:00〜 (in Japanese language only)