Ur: Landschaft – eine Reise. Dialogausstellung mit Justyna Feicht und Shoko Matsuyama
In the organizer's words:
Are there also landscapes in unknown countries that seem so familiar to us, as if we had always known them? In Japanese, such places are called Genfûkei, "primordial landscape".
For the exhibition "Ur: Landscape - A Journey", camerawoman Justyna Feicht, who lives in Germany and Japan, and artist Shoko Matsuyama, who lives in Germany, traveled through Aomori together.
In northern Japan, the popular belief in an afterworld is deeply rooted, and in the course of her documentary work Feicht learns about the tradition of Kuchiyose (literally: "mouth calling"), a ceremony in which blind shamans, called Itako, make contact with the deceased, which still exists in Aomori today. At the same time, she is interested in the folk beliefs of the region and conducts interviews and cinematic field research. Fascinated by the world view in parts of north-eastern Japan, which stands in contrast to the modern, rational world, she combines this with her own inner, poetic world in her works.
For Tokyo-born Shoko Matsuyama, Aomori is not only a familiar region where she spent time with her mother and grandmother every year as a child, but also a foreign place that fascinated and frightened her at the same time.
Matsuyama has been living in Germany since 2009 and after her grandmother and mother passed away, she feels a strong longing and "homesickness" for this place, which she considers to be the root of her soul, her "original landscape". Her works deal with the phenomenon of memory in a place that is both real and imaginary.
The process by which Shoko Matsuyama searches for her "original landscape" in the country where she was not born and raised, and the psychological process in which Justyna Feicht explores the belief in the afterlife of this country, are an expression of the movement of the soul and thus also an expression of a journey.
Many believe that death is also a journey. The exhibition allows us to experience this journey, which every person will take at some point, and invites us on a journey into our own hearts.
Justyna Feicht studied film and camera at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts and has made documentary films in numerous countries, most recently about rural exodus in Japan.
Shoko Matsuyama studied graphic design and contemporary art in Japan and under Rosemarie Trockel in Düsseldorf; she creates sculptures and participative installations.
Supported by JTI
This content has been machine translated.Price information:
Free admission. Please note that the Japanese Cultural Institute is closed Monday - Friday between 1 and 2 pm.
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