21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Entrance Chapter 3: Welcome to Xijing—Xijing Immigration Bureau 2012

To enter the country of Xijing, one naturally must go through immigration. Xijing Men at the embassy provide disembarkation papers, items necessary for entry, and entry permit instructions. When we think of entering and exiting a country, we must by necessity consider the meaning of an invisible border and crossing that border.

Gallery 7 Chapter 4: I Love Xijing—Xijing’s President in Everyday Life 2009

This artwork depicts each of the Xijing Men handling national policy as president during 14 days. To make Xijing a prosperous, fun nation, they employ unique methods of visualizing and solving problems related to education, urban design, economic, territory, and food.

Gallery 8　Gimhongsok’s Room

Gimhongsok observes one thing from two different vantage points and asks how the thing in question appears from different positions. Through art, he examines that difference. Gimhongsok is particularly interested in good approaches to translating culture. Public Blank (2006-2008) is a work expressing through text and drawings a new proposal for public art. Placing preconceptions of public art as “monumental propaganda” in contrast with the reality, the work refers to the individual, who is minimized in the name of “public.”

Galleries 9-10　Chen Shaoxiong’s Room

Chen Shaoxiong has selected photographs from the Internet of historical events occurring in the period 1909 to 2009 and created more than 150 ink paintings. Presented are Ink History, a work summarizing his nation’s history of modernization in a roughly 3-minute long motion picture, and Ink Media, a work showing how people have stood up to resist authoritarian power and violence around the world.

Gallery 11 Chapter 3: Welcome to Xijing—Xijing Olympics 2008 / Chapter 3: Welcome to Xijing—Xijing Winter Olympics 2014

Having decided to take part in the Olympics as an independent nation, Xijing held its own Olympic Games during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in another area of Beijing. Numerous world records were made and medals awarded in diving, soccer, table tennis, archery, weightlifting and so on. It became an occasion to think about the meaning and purpose of the fun, friendly competition that is part of the sports etymology.
In 2014 they also held Xijing winter Olympics in Tokyo, while devising competition based on winter sports such as ice hockey, luge and curling.

Gallery 12 Chapter 4: I Love Xijing—School in the Nation of Xijing 2013

Looking at education in Xijing, it appears like the complete opposite of the education systems and policies we find in actual society. In Xijing, hierarchies between teachers and students are discarded, and methods of studying and learning together are used for language, mathematics, philosophy, music, history, physical education, and science.

Gallery 14　Ozawa Tsuyoshi’s Room

Ozawa Tsuyoshi’s recent work, The Return of Painter F, is also a fictional story. Taking as its main character “Painter F,” a Japanese painter who was dispatched as a soldier to war in Indonesia, the work depicts the painter’s life from before the war to after, through oil paintings and video. The Return of Painter F evokes the unknown artists hidden by the walls of history, from both perspectives of the dominator and the dominated, through the life of a painter living in war time. Ozawa has based the work on documentation concerning an actual war painter and discussions with musicians and painters in Indonesia where he is thought to have stayed.

Xijing Men is a project-based collaborative team composed of three artists: OZAWA Tsuyoshi, CHEN Shaoxiong and Gimhongsok. Since 2007, they have been working to convey the story of Xijing, a fictional city somewhere in Asia, ever a series of five projects.

Chen Shaoxiong
Chen Shaoxiong was born in Shantou, China in 1962. His solo exhibitions include Prepared: Strategies for Activists (Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas, 2012), Air-Dry History (Pékin Fine Arts, Hong Kong, 2013), CHEN SHAOXIONG: INK. HISTORY. MEDIA (Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2014). Recent group exhibitions include Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014), Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video (The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014), Making Histories (Kansas City Art Institute, 2015), and The Civil Power (Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, 2015).

Gimhongsok
Gimhongsok was born in Seoul, Korea in 1964. His solo exhibitions were shown at REDCAT (Los Angeles, 2004), Artsonje Center (Seoul, 2011), Plateau, Samsung Museum (Seoul, 2013). He has participated in group exhibitions such as the 50th and 51st Venice Biennales, the 10th Istanbul Biennale, the 4th, 6th and 9th Gwangju Biennales, Brave New Worlds (Walker Art Center, 2007), Laughing in a Foreign Languages (Hayward Gallery, 2008), and Your Bright Future (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009).

Ozawa Tsuyoshi
Ozawa Tsuyoshi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1965. His solo exhibitions include Answer with Yes and No! (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2004), The Invisible Runner Strides On (Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2009), The Return of Painter F (Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, 2015). He has participated in group exhibitions such as the 50th Venice Biennales, The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2006), Prospect 2 (The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, 2011).