Two Exhibitions

Art in General presents two concurrent solo exhibitions by esteemed international collectives Chim↑Pom and Don't Follow the Wind. At a moment when the United States is rearranging long-standing nuclear policies, these artists ask us to deeply contemplate the entwined historical, political, psychological and environmental impact of the nuclear from the perspective of its ongoing critical legacies in Japan.

Tokyo-based collective Chim↑Pom traverses geographies to engage trans-historical moments that shape our conflicted present. Chim↑Pom: Threat of Peace (Hiroshima!!!!!!) is the first solo exhibition to bring together over a decade of the artists’ installation and video works about Hiroshima—the first site where a nuclear weapon was ever utilized, detonated by the United States military during World War II. The exhibition features newly commissioned video and site-specific installation alongside more iconic works well-known throughout Asia, but never previously shown in New York.

Don’t Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center considers the ongoing nuclear devastation in Fukushima, exploring its lasting consequences through video and site-specific installation. The collective Don't Follow the Wind was established inside the radioactive exclusion zone in Japan in the wake of the nuclear meltdown in 2011. As humans cannot directly sense radiation, the project posits critical imagination as a tool to overcome its invisibility and bridge the ongoing urgency of crisis with long-term attentiveness.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima, these two exhibitions negotiate the dire and entwined fate of a military technology turned consumer utility and ask us to reflect on the shared responsibilities of our past, current and future nuclear cultures.

Chim↑Pom was formed in Tokyo in 2005 by the six artists Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada, Motomu Inaoka, and Toshinori Mizuno. They have held solo exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1, Parco Museum, Tokyo, Saatchi Gallery, London, and Dallas Contemporary. They also have been invited to participate in many international biennials, including Sao Paulo Biennial and Shanghai Biennale, Lyon Biennale, and Asian Art Biennial. Their work is in numerous collections including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, M+, Hong Kong, and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In 2015, they opened their artist-run space, Garter, in Tokyo to curate and showcase work by many of their contemporaries. Since then, they recently have been working on various projects related to the theme of “borders” and presented “The Other Side,” a project on the U.S.-Mexico border, in 2017.

Don’t Follow the Wind (2015–20XX) is collective of artists and curators—Chim↑Pom, Kenji Kubota, Eva and Franco Mattes, Jason Waite—who confront the long-term crisis in Fukushima, Japan. Don’t Follow the Wind is working together with local residents, a committee of cultural workers and the artists Ai Weiwei, Chim↑Pom, Grand Guignol Mirai, Nikolaus Hirsch and Jorge Otero-Pailos, Meiro Koizumi, Eva and Franco Mattes, Aiko Miyanaga, Ahmet Öğüt, Trevor Paglen, Taryn Simon, Nobuaki Takekawa and Kota Takeuchi. Along with the inaccessible project inside the Fukushima exclusion zone the collective has developed a number of Non-Visitor Centers that have taken place at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, 20th Biennale of Sydney, Yokohama Triennale 2017, Arts Catalyst in London, CCCB in Barcelona and Extra City in Antwerp.