Kinan Art Residence Vol.3 

Kinan Art Week held Kinan Art Residence Vol.3, following Kinan Art Residence Vol.1 in 2023 and Kinan Art Residence Vol.2 in 2024.

This program invites artists from Japan and abroad to stay in the Kinan region, where they will conduct research on the region’s various cultures and history, and develop works and art projects inspired by the research.
We recruit around one or two artists each year.

This year, we invited Yumi Kuroki, following Geert Mul, a contemporary artist from the Netherlands.

Kuroki, a ceramic artist from Fukuoka, has a theme of “living things that just live,” and pursues sculptural expression using glazes that take advantage of the firing in the kiln.
She creates her works using a unique technique that uses wire and glaze,
but she never manages to produce anything exactly as planned. She experiments daily, seeking the excitement of when the glaze and wire swell and fuse with heat, forming a living organism, coming out of the kiln.
Kuroki says that these actions are aimed at creating works that “make use of what is available” and sometimes “accept the meaningless,”
and that are able to accompany the small things in everyday life.

We feel that the creative process is close to the theme of this exhibition, “slime mold,” and that during this art residency, participants will begin creating works in Kinan using waste materials obtained from farmers and collaborators.

<Overview of the residency>

Period: 12 Jul – 19 Sep
Residence: Towa-so (Tanabe City, Wakayama)

<Residence Artist>

Yumi Kuroki

Born in Fukuoka City in 1991. Ceramic artist.
With the theme of “living things that only live,” she pursues sculptural expression using glazes that take advantage of firing in a kiln.
Through her research into ancient Oriental faience, which has the characteristics of both glaze and earth, she creates works using a unique technique using wire and glaze.
Attracted by the texture of bubbles, which have opposing meanings such as beauty and ugliness, proliferation and disappearance, the glaze material and technique that expands like bubbles and my own emotions interact with each other to produce shapes and colors, and as a result of firing, she creates organic shapes like living things.
Her main exhibitions include the solo exhibition “Kuroki Yumi #1” (2022, Nihongi, Fukuoka). She is participating in a residency at the Seto International Ceramic & Glass Art Exchange Program (2022, Aichi).

＜Status of the stay＞