Haegue Yang and Daniel Boyd are currently participating in the Okayama Art Summit 2022, an international art exhibition held in Okayama City, Japan, every three years. With the contemporary artist Rikrit Tiravanija as artistic director, this year’s triennale takes place across ten historical and cultural sites in Okayama City, including the Okayama Castle and Korakuen Garden.
Titled Do we dream under the same sky, the triennale brings together 25 artists from various cultural and social backgrounds. As artistic director, Tiravanija aimed to highlight the “peripheral practices” of the artists who come from “itinerant backgrounds,” encouraging viewers “to dream in a sky of difference, in a sky of multiplicity, of narratives of representation that [are] peripheral to the western canon.”

For the widely anticipated triennale, the celebrated Korean contemporary artist Haegue Yang presents four works across four different venues. Installed in an open area at Ishiyama Park is An Opaque Wind – Trifid Seating in Six Folds (2022), Yang’s new sculptural complex commissioned by the Okayama Art Summit. Comprised of arched towers of varying sizes and double-sided benches branching into three, the work highlights the artist’s long-standing interest in brick, a material both universally available and locally inflected. On view at the Okayama Shrine are two new works from Mesmerizing Mesh, Yang’s series of hanji (Korean traditional paper) collages inspired by sacred paper objects employed in shamanistic rituals, while the Okayama Orient Museum showcases Sonic Cosmic Rope – Gold Dodecagon Straight Weave (2022), in which metal bells are linked together to form a geometric arrangement. Also presented in the Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza of Okayama Prefecture is Sonicwear – Gold Conical Hands (2022), evoking the sculptural costumes from the performance directed by the German artist and choreographer Oskar Schlemmer.

Participating as the only Australian artist, Daniel Boyd introduces glass façade installations, alongside a selection of videos and paintings. Displayed across the classrooms, hallways, and gymnasium of the Former Uchisange Elementary School, Boyd’s paintings appropriate images of icons that have played significant roles in Australia’s founding history. He then covers much of the painting’s surface with clear, convex dots of glue, which act as “lenses” through which one views and comprehends the world. The artist further translates this signature technique into a moving image in Yamani (2018), exhibited in the Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza of Okayama Prefecture. Featuring numerous dots that consistently move across the screen, the video metaphorically evokes the process by which an individual fills and enlightens the dark void of the unknown based on their unique background and knowledge.

Shedding light on the narratives of diverse cultural and social backgrounds beyond the Western canon, Do we dream under the same sky runs through November 27, 2022. Throughout the duration of the triennale, the Okayama Art Summit will release interview videos with participating artists, which can be viewed on its official website.