Polka-Dotted Blossoms

A highlight of the event was Kusama Yayoi’s sculpture Tsumari in Bloom. Visitors encountered the polka-dotted blossoms of that work near Tōkamachi’s Matsudai Station.

Also highlighting this year’s festival were evocative works at several former elementary and junior high schools. The works were especially evocative because closed schools—increasingly common throughout Japan—bear witness to the nation’s shrinking and aging population.

Kiyotsukyō Elementary School, which closed in 2009 after 49 years, is one of the schools that metamorphosed for this year’s triennale. Its former gymnasium became an exhibition gallery and a storage warehouse for art works and materials. The onsite storage capacity proved a godsend for urban artists crimped for space and especially for artists who exhibited large works at the festival.

Works displayed in the gymnasium of the shuttered Kiyotsukyō Elementary School.

Tashima Seizō, a picture book artist, transformed a former elementary school into a “walk-in picture book” for the 2009 triennale. The former Sanada Elementary School, which closed in 2005 after 130 years of service in the village of Hachi, became the Hachi and Seizō Tashima Museum of Picture Book Art. For the 2015 event, Tashima added a work in a former classroom modeled on the school’s last three students and created a biotope outside the museum occupied by the memory-eating goblin Toperatoto and the goat Shizuka.

The Hachi and Seizō Tashima Museum of Picture Book Art by Tashima Seizō.

A focal point of each Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale is the Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art/Kinare, a 10-minute walk from Tōkamachi Station. This year, the New York–based Chinese artist Cai Guo-qiang installed a sprawling work through the courtyard and ground-floor corridor. Cai drew inspiration for the work from an island renowned in Chinese legend as the home of immortals. He evoked the island Penglai (“Horai” in Japanese) with trees, a man-made waterfall, and about 1,000 straw objects crafted by children under the guidance of local craftspersons. Cai gave a performance at the museum on July 25, employing his famous technique of creating gunpowder-scorched patterns on paper.

An expansive piece created for the Triennale by Chinese artist Cai Guo-qiang.