ACT 2025 - Artists Contemporary TOKAS - 7th Edition - Marion Paquette, Shikichi Osamu, Shoji Asami
Plural Body/ies
複数形の身体
Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo
22 February - 23 March 2025
― Examining contemporary society based on the plurality of the body/ies
It is said that, of the approximately 8 billion people that inhabit the earth today, we get in contact with a total of about 30,000 – or 0.000375% of the earth’s population – in our lifetime. When imagining all the people on the planet that we don’t and will never know, we realize the immense scale of human existence, that exceeds by far what we can grasp with our own bodily senses. This exhibition is themed around the plurality of the human body, which is also what the creative work of the three featured artists – Marion PAQUETTE, SHIKICHI Osamu, SHOJI Asami is derived from. The body that transforms through relationships with others; the body that is multiplied in the virtual space; or human society as one collective body – these are some of the various positions from which visitors are invited to explore the properties and possibilities of the “body” in the present age.
Our body is built to functions as an organ by which we perceive the world around us. Every single one of us is a subject that generates communication, recognizes the people around, and builds relationships with them.
But why is it that human existence comes with not only one, but multiple “bodies”? One thing that facilitates the plural nature of the body, are its reproductive functions. A human is always born from multiple other bodies, and for about 200,000 years since Homo sapiens is said to have emerged, history unfurled as a string of countless interactions between one human body and another.
At the same time, advanced medical technology has enabled us to extract such individual human body parts as organs or blood, and transplant them into the bodies of people in need of those specific parts. In other words, it is possible to manipulate living bodies to integrate parts of multiple bodies of other human beings. The pervasion of digital technologies in everyday life promoted the virtual multiplication of individual bodies, whereas images of avatars or bodies modified using apps, for example, assume multiple identities through various aspects on levels other than physical reality .
This exhibition focusing on the plural existence(s) of (the) human body/ies, features works by Marion Paquette, Shikichi Osamu,and Shoji Asami, three artists who examine in their respective works the mutual bodily relationships between human individuals. Considering his dance as a form of communication at a stage prior to verbal formulation, Shikichi pursues ways of transferring and internalizing sensations generated through interactions between individuals, into other bodies. Shoji translates the worlds that she explores with her body into painted spaces, to create works that viewers are to experience in a way as if moving back and forth between their own and the artist’s body. Paquette’s creations are collective structures that incorporate human individuals in coexistence and interaction with each other, constructing spaces where the boundaries between private and public are blurred. Each focusing on the delicate relationships between individual bodies that continue to affect one another, the three artists create works that project the plural nature of the human body, remind us of the imaginative faculty and sensibility as its fundamental abilities, and inspire us to envision new possible ways of extending/expanding it into different forms of “bodies.”
ACT (Artists Contemporary TOKAS) is a special exhibition introducing artists who practice notable activities, including those who have previously participated in other Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) programs.
Marion PAQUETTE
Marion Paquette participated in “Quebec-Tokyo Exchange Residency Program” (2023) at the Tokyo Arts and Space. In their artistic practice, Paquette creates interfaces and situations through which they explore the delicate relationships between bodies, spaces and objects. Their typical work is a soft sculpture made from textile, paper or other material with a plastic quality, that visualizes the physical transformations and behaviors that are triggered by the interrelations between one’s own singular body and the bodies of those around. Inspired by their interest in the “social body” that emerges in the space between private and public, Paquette also creates works that, with the various playful ideas they incorporate, encourage physical interventions by passersby at public places. During their stay in 2023 as part of a TOKAS residency program, Paquette conducted research into the phenomenon of “inemuri” (dozing) that can be observed at public spaces in Japan, and eventually created “inemuri · 居眠り· dormir présent·e,” a mobile private recreation space that people can take with them wherever they go. Proposing a form of private space that is temporarily set up in a public environment, the work creates situations in which the social body suddenly transforms into a private one.
In this exhibition, Marion Paquette presents a large-scale installation that was inspired by a mycelium structure of fungi that serve as a foundation for ecosystems of living organisms. Unfolding across the entire exhibition space, the work comprises approximately 45 objects made from recycled cloth taken from actual sails that the artist was given by friends back home in Montreal. Visitors are free to walk into the work, and through that physical action, loosely connect the pieces of cloth that have traveled all the way from Canada, along with the personal stories that are contained in every one of them. Just like humans have identified connections between stars in the night sky in the forms of constellations with certain added meanings, through devices that build connections between individual human beings, Marion Paquette reconsiders through their creative work the collective body that is human society. Their performance is scheduled for the closing day of the exhibition.
Marion Paquette was born in Montreal in 1992. Lives and works in Montreal. Graduated with a BA in Visual and Media Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal in 2015. Recent exhibitions: “inemuri 居眠りdormir présent·e,” Occurrence espace d'art et d'essai contemporains, Montreal, 2024, “Fil · Flux · Figments,” Livart, Montreal, 2024, “Mur Mitoyen,” Espace Transmission, curators Clara and Alexis Cousineau, Montreal, 2023, “entre bleu," Vrille art actuel, La Pocatiere, 2023, “bleu de lieu,” Fondation PHI pour l’art contemporain, Montreal, 2022.
SHIKICHI Osamu
Shikichi Osamu participated in “OPEN SITE 6” (2021) at the Tokyo Arts and Space. Shikichi explores ways of grasping one’s own body and its “reality” as things that are impossible to perceive objectively from the outside, by way of interacting with other people in our immediate, material environment. Revolving around a central axis of choreography and dance, his works incorporate elements of performance, sculpture, video art, etc., realized through creative processes in which the artist blurs identification methods related to the human body, in order to reconfigure the mechanism of physical perception at large. In the works in the “blooming dots” series that he has been working on continuously since 2020, he uses a smartphone – an indispensable daily life tool for us today, almost like an additional body part – as a “third eye,” to explore the new body languages that emerge when transforming oneself into what seems like someone else’s body, and thereby establishing a “new body that belongs to everyone and no-one.” At the same time, Shikichi focuses also on the physical sensation itself that is spawned through such kinds of interactions, visualizing especially the so-called “autonomous sensory meridian response” (ASMR) – a pleasantly tingling sensation in response to audio-visual stimulation – through forms of movement charged with what he refers to as “WET” (weird erotic tension).
The subject of Shikichi’s work at this exhibition is the Noh play “Izutsu,” in which a woman sees a reflection of herself in the water of a well, wearing her deceased husband’s attire, and performs a dance while imagining his face and remembering the days they spent together. Shikichi translates the story into a performative installation, identifying the woman’s dance with a sensual “lap dance” that is performed for one specific person, based on his own texts related to choreography. Shikichi will also show a performance during the exhibition period.
Shikichi Osamu was born in Saitama in 1994. Lives and works in Brussels and Tokyo. Graduated with P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Training Cycle) in 2024 (dance), and an MA in Film and New Media from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2020. Recent exhibitions: “ ユアファントムアイ、アワクリスタライズペイン / ur phantom eyes, our crystalized pains,” Kaaistudios, Brussels, 2024, “unisex #01,” Camping Asia, Taipei, 2023, “Hyper Ambient Club 'My lips to your ear, my hand on yours, the words moving underneath the shadows we made',” Creative Center Osaka (CCO), 2023, “Subterraneans and Mirrorless Mirror,” gallery αM, Tokyo, 2022, “BankART Under 35 2021 'ama phantom',” BankART KAIKO, Yokohama, 2021. Recent awards: “Grants for Overseas Study by Young Artists,” Pola Art Foundation, 2023, “Yokohama Dance Collection 2020," French Embassy Award for Young Choreographers.
SHOJI Asami
Shoji Asami participated in “TOKAS-Emerging 2016” at the Tokyo Arts and Space. Considering her human body as “the origin of painting,” Shoji has been exploring in her work the physical image and sensation that arises through the experience of “viewing a painting.” Her work at large is characterized by an approach of painting intuitively without defining beforehand what the finished painting will look like, using mainly semitransparent acrylic panels and canvases as support media. She usually begins by drawing a single line without doing any prior sketching, and applies paint, only to remove the paint again by wiping it away. She then gives herself to the image that instinctively appears in her mind in the process, picks up the brush once again to paint, then removes the paint again… It is a cyclic repetition of physical actions, during which the painting gradually takes shape. Birds and other animals, nude human figures, transparent bodies with their bones exposed, and various other images that are coincidentally born in the painted spaces from the strokes of her arms, are all manifestations of the artist herself that exist alongside her actual body. Charged with swirling primitive impulse and emotion, her paintings show human figures with arms opened wide as if offering their body to someone else, or touching each other’s faces with their hands or cheeks, adding a vague sense of affection that stirs the viewer’s senses.
Shoji’s exhibition this time comprises several dozen new works including oil paintings, around a series of drawings as a centerpiece. Scheduled for the opening day is a performance in which the artist paints the window of the exhibition venue, as part of the artist’s attempt to travel back and forth between her body in the painter’s position, and those in the paintings that she makes.
Shoji Asami was born in Fukushima in 1988. Lives and works in Tokyo. Graduated with an MA in Printmaking course from Tama Art University Graduate School of Fine Arts in 2012. Recent exhibitions: “MOT ANNUAL 2024 'on the imagined terrain',” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2024, “October, Much Ado About Nothing,” Semiose, Paris, 2024, “A Stranger’s Tales” Independent Art Fair with LINSEED, New York, 2024, “a Gait Without Foot,” gallery21yo-j,Tokyo, 2023, “Body, Love, Gender,” Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea, 2023, “Yearning for Vision,” Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kanagawa, and others, 2023. Recent awards: “The 31st Gotoh Memorial Cultural Award,” Newcomer's Prize of Art, 2020, “Tokyo Wonder Wall 2015,” Tokyo Wonder Wall Prize, 2015, Selected, “The 18th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art” (participated as art unit, Conceptual Architect), 2015.
TOKYO ARTS AND SPACE HONGO - TOKAS
2 -4-16 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF ACT - ARTISTS CONTEMPORARY TOKAS @ TOKYO ARTS AND SPACE, ON WANAFOTO:
1st Edition - ACT 2019 - Artists: Sato Masaharu, Nishimura Yu, Yoshigai Nao
2nd Edition - ACT 2020 - Artists: Tanaka Shusuke, Hirose Nana & Nagatani Kazuma, Watanabe Go
3rd Edition - ACT 2021 - Artists: Tanaka Shusuke, Hirose Nana & Nagatani Kazuma, Watanabe Go
4th Edition - ACT 2022 - Artists: Saito Haruka, Nakazawa Daisuke, Yuasa Ebosi
5th Edition - ACT 2023 - Artists: Ebihara Yasushi, Samejima Yui, Sudo Misa
6th Edition - ACT 2024 - Artists: Ohba Takafumi, Suga Yushi, YOF = Yanagawa Tomoyuki + Ohara Takayoshi + Furusawa Ryu
ACT（Artists Contemporary TOKAS）Vol. 7 "Plural Body/ies"
Updated 18-02-2025