The Abu Dhabi Festival is commemorating the UAE and Japan’s 50-year diplomatic relationship with an exhibition titled “Variation and Autonomy: The Prints of Contemporary Japanese Painters.”
The traveling exhibition, which runs until July 7, is curated by Kyoji Takizawa of Tokyo’s Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts and features the work of ten artists who experimented with prints in the 1970s in the field of contemporary art.
The exhibition is on display at The Galleria Al Maryah Island and includes works by Yayoi Kusama, Toshinobu Onosato, Yasukazu Tabuchi, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Hitoshi Nakazato, Tomoharu Murakami, Naoyoshi Hikosaka, Kosai Hori, and Toeko Tatsuno, as well as Japanese artists Masanari Murai, Toshino.
The performance is part of Abu Dhabi Festival 2022, which is themed “Crafting the Emirates State of Mind: Creation, Innovation, and Joy.”
According to Huda I. Alkhamis-Kanoo, the creator and artistic director of Abu Dhabi Festival, it allows “audiences in the UAE to enjoy the beauty of modern Japanese art and to discover the talent of its influential artists.”
“The exhibition, which features 42 prints by ten prominent Japanese contemporary painters, including the world-famous Yayoi Kusama, reflects the festival’s nearly two-decade commitment to bringing the best international talent to Abu Dhabi audiences, advancing cross-cultural exchanges between nations, and building communication bridges through the arts,” she added.
Japanese modern prints have a long history dating back to the 1950s, when a rising number of painters began experimenting with lithography. For years, however, Japanese printmaking has characterized the country’s artistic output, with artists such as Hokusai, an 18th-century woodblock print artist, considered an icon in the art world. The emergence of various printing workshops across the country in the 1960s created the path for artists who weren’t necessarily printmaking professionals to produce their own works, signaling a break from the artists who came before them. This exhibition focuses on artists who worked in the 1970s, including Yayoi Kusama, whose work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, and several galleries across the world.