Remote rural art festival goes viral online, drawing 500,000 visitors to check in, showing that the countryside has hope
Recently, Japan's "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale" opened, and LOHAS, the most popular lifestyle magazine in China, was invited to attend. Artists and tourists from all over the world rushed into this small town, excitedly witnessing this triennial visual feast.
Why can this art festival drive the whole world crazy? Unlike traditional indoor art museums, the artists use the vast land as their stage and place wildly imaginative artworks in the fields. Nature and art merge into one, creating many breathtaking landscapes.
Today, Shaoyao takes everyone into"Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale", into this wonderful, magnificent, rarely seen world of imagination.
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Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale
What kind of impression do you have of rural China? Ancient villages, dilapidated bricks and tiles, or fresh air and golden fields at harvest?
In one such field, there is no expected scene of busy farming. Instead, a pure white window stands in the open space, its curtain fluttering in the wind, framing the beautiful scenery before it into a vivid oil painting.
This window seems like a visitor from outer space, out of place in the rural environment, yet perfectly integrated with it. This work is titled"For Many Lost Windows", intended to remind people to open their hearts, discover the beauty around them, and return to the embrace of nature.
Scattered across this vast field are many similar works, all coming from Japan's"Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale"。
Those urban trendsetters who shuttle through various exhibition halls would never imagine thatthe world's trendiest art stronghold is actually rooted in a remote rural village thousands of miles from the city center.
What kind of place is Echigo-Tsumari? Yasunari Kawabata wrote in Snow Country, "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky."
The real-life inspiration for "Snow Country" is this region named"Echigo-Tsumari"This region is covered in snow year-round, with winter snow accumulating up to 1 m deep. Coupled with its remote location, crisscrossing ravines, and inconvenient transportation, people call it "the ultimate remote place," useful only for hiding from war.
Over several decades, the young and able-bodied people of the region left one after another to study or work elsewhere, leaving only elderly people alone in empty nests. The entire community was declining and withering step by step.
Even the villagers themselves never expected that one day in 2000, a middle-aged man would walk into the village and hold a strange exhibition, bringing the whole village back to life and making it bustling with visitors.
This middle-aged man is "Fram Kitagawa," and this exhibition is the "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale."
Since 2000, the "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale" has been held once every three years. Fram Kitagawa invites famous artists from more than 40 countries around the world to come into the fields and forests of Echigo-Tsumari and work with local villagers to create bizarre and profoundly evocative artworks.
The biggest feature of the "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale" is that it breaks through the limitations of conventional venuesand places all artworks in nature.
Across the vast 760 sq km of Echigo-Tsumari's fields, more than 200 wildly imaginative artworks are scattered everywhere. As you stroll through terraced fields, forests, and abandoned houses, you will be delighted to discover all kinds of fantastical installations forming wonderful interactions with nature.
On July 29 this year, the sixth "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale" raised its curtain,with a total of 380 works spanning 44 countries and regions, including about 170 new works, attracting nearly 500,000 visitors.
Among the more than 200 artworks, Shaoyao has selected a few of the most classic ones to share with everyone. How does a little-known small village become a globally sought-after art mecca?
When you think of a white house in the fields, you may think of a water tower or a windmill. At the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, there is also such a white house, only stranger in shape than an alien.
This building is called"Matsudai Nohbutai"Its main body is supported by four "legs," resembling a crouching frog lying in the fields. To express reverence for nature, the works displayed indoors are all closely related to this cultivated land. Here, humans and frogs are true friends, guarding this field together.
Near Nohbutai, several works are highlights of the art festival. For example, the installation below, titled"Flowers Bloom at Tsumari", is by renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
The design continues Kusama's signature style: intense colors, psychedelic polka dots, and scattered petals flying freely, suggesting the land's tenacious vitality.
Another representative work is"Rice Terraces", by a Russian artist. Standing on the observation deck of Nohbutai, among the staggered terraced fields are statues of farmers working hard, plowing, sowing, transplanting rice seedlings... Before your eyes also hang hollow metal letters describing the farming history of this land.
Viewed from a specific angle, the green terraced fields, colorful statues, and white letters form a comprehensive 3D picture book, restoring the entire scene and process of farming, inviting people to reflect on the long history of this land and inspiring love for it.
Nohbutai strives to explain the "satoyama spirit," that is,"the art of living in harmony between humans and nature"。
Here, humans no longer regard themselves as creators, but instead cherish gratitude toward nature and pay lofty respect to every inch of land, every green leaf, and every kind of animal, reminding every visitor to the exhibition that this is the land that nurtures us and the place on which we depend for survival.
In recent years, our country's population aging trend has become obvious, especially in rural areas, where empty-nest elderly people are everywhere. Vacated rooms are either left idle or demolished, presenting a dilapidated scene of ruins and debris.
Japan has not been spared either. Because of severe population loss, abandoned old houses are everywhere in Echigo-Tsumari, and many schools have not been spared either. Sanada Elementary School was abandoned in 2005.
But in the eyes of picture book author Seizo Tajima, this abandoned house is magical. He turned it into an art museum full of childhood fantasy:Picture Book and Tree Fruit Art Museum。
He transported a large amount of driftwood from the Izu Peninsula and the Sea of Japan to this place, painted them, along with tree fruits and washi paper, in brilliant colors, and made them into shapes of all kinds, filling every classroom with imagination.
Speaking of this, one cannot fail to mention another "abandoned house renovation" project:House of Shedding Skin。
This is a 150-year-old old farmhouse, tottering under wind and sun. University professor Junichi Kuragake, together with local villagers and volunteers, carefully repaired this house, and then, each person with a chisel in hand, carved intricate patterns into every corner of the house.
From the floor to the walls, from the beams to the ceiling, everything is densely covered with patterns carved by everyone's own hands.The whole house seems reborn, showing a completely new appearance.
From conception to creation and completion, this work took about two and a half years, with 3,000 people participating in total. It contains the professor's creativity and even more the villagers' hard work.Artists and villagers join forces to revitalize the countryside through art.
The artists did not forget the original appearance of these empty houses, nor did they forget the roots of this land. With wildly imaginative creativity, they brought this wasted land back to life and returned it to former days in another form.
Such a grand art festival, of course, cannot be without the presence of Chinese artists. Famous architect Ma Yansong led MAD Architects to participate in the art triennale for the first time, renovating the more than 20-year-oldKiyotsu Gorge Tunnel。
At the end of the tunnel is a semicircular opening. The water surface and the stainless steel plates laid on the inner walls of the tunnel together form a 360° surrounding mirror, reflecting the V-shaped valley outside the opening.
Inside and outside, real and virtual, true and false: people within it lose the ability to distinguish, as if strolling in a fairyland.
Ma Yansong's design concept is to use the special shape of architectureto bring natural scenery indoors, allowing architecture and nature to blend into one and illuminate each other.
In addition to the works highlighted above, other wonderful works are scattered throughout the fields of Echigo-Tsumari, and you need to calm your mind and walk among the field ridges to discover them.
For example, in the camping area stands a huge mirror reflecting the sky. Surrounded by towering mountains, this small patch of world nevertheless contains the movement of clouds, and can also be called a visual wonder.
Because the snow season is long and the snow accumulation is heavy, the warehouses in Echigo-Tsumari are all designed in arched shapes to prevent the snow from crushing them.Taiwan, China, picture book author Jimmy Liaotook this as inspiration and painted the warehouse to look like a train, full of childlike fun.
In addition to visual enjoyment, you can also taste the most authentic food of the Japanese countryside. At Satoyama Shokudo, all tables, chairs, and floors are painted a refreshing light blue. Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the view is filled with vegetation as dense as a primeval forest.
The food here is cooked personally by local grandmothers. The ingredients are seasonal agricultural products and wild ingredients. Besides locally specialty rice, there are ice-soaked cucumbers, sansho pork, wild berry jelly... every bite is the fresh and abundant taste of the season.
These are only a drop in the ocean. In the 760 sq km of Echigo-Tsumari, countless surprises are still hidden among the field ridges and soil. With love for nature and gratitude for the land, people treat the fields as a stage for free expression and create wonderful art.
An art festival of such a large scale was not built overnight. It not only consumes time and energy, but also requires the help and cooperation of villagers. Curator Fram Kitagawa once talked about how, during the preparation process, he got villagers to participate in this art festival.
In 2000, he discovered this undeveloped land in Echigo-Tsumari and came up with the idea of planning an art festival.He warmly invited local villagers to participate in this art festival, but was met with cold looks.
Curator Fram Kitagawa
For people who have farmed for generations, art is remote and incomprehensible. "What is art? I don't understand it."
Having been rebuffed, Kitagawa did not give up. He tirelessly traveled around giving speeches, calling on people to join in, and during that time was turned away countless times. When the first art festival was held, among more than 200 villages, only 28 were willing to participate.
Curator Fram Kitagawa
Later he understoodthat villagers must participate personally in the art festival for art to truly penetrate into the countryside.So many of the various materials and crafts needed for the art festival were provided by villagers, and the later maintenance and upkeep of the art installations were also handed over to the villagers.
Now, grandmothers in the village who are good at cooking serve as restaurant chefs, the renovated homestays bring income to the homeowners, and the endless stream of visitors brings vitality to the village. Gradually, the villagers also joined the camp of the art countryside.
Only then was a deep connection established between the artworks and the countryside. This art festival is no longer artists playing and entertaining themselves, but truly integrated into the countryside and deeply rooted in people's hearts.
Fram Kitagawa said:"Making local residents the protagonists is the reason the art festival was ultimately accepted."
Let art return to the mountains and fields, and let the soul return to nature.
When we are held back by the busy rhythm of the city,
when we forget our original intention in day-after-day numbness,
please remember that the embrace of nature is always open to you.
Here there is pure blue sky and fields,
here there are simple farmers and land,
only here
can we find the earliest touch in the depths of our hearts.
END
Images from the official website of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale