Ground Transposition, 1987/2016
This ground ball project is not only the origin of my artistic activities, but also my lifework. In recent years, I exhibited two spheres (one made of soil from Henoko, Okinawa, and the other made of sand from the desert of Manzanar, a former Japanese American concentration camp in California) at a gallery in Los Angeles. Plans are currently underway to make spheres from local sea salt and mud from tidal flats for a floating museum on a lake at a remote island in South Korea that is scheduled for completion in 2023. In 2016, I proposed that this work, made for my solo exhibition at BankART, be made from the decontaminated soil from the nuclear power plant disaster of the Great Tohoku Earthquake of March 11, 2011. Although it did not come to fruition, it contains a handful of soil that was brought back from a research trip to the disaster area.
Yukinori YANAGI
Born 1959 in Fukuoka Prefecture. Completed the sculpture course at Yale University’s Graduate School of Art. In 1993, Yanagi was awarded the prize at Aperto in the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993 and immediately rose to prominence both domestically and internationally. Yanagi’s works address such social issues as migration, border crossing, and the national government with a sense of humor. In 2012, he began working on the remote island of Momoshima in Onomichi City, presiding over the non-profit organization “ART BASE MOMOSHIMA”. At BankART, he mounted a large-scale solo exhibition, “Yukinori Yanagi – Wandering Position,” in 2016.