Collection Exhibition: Walking, Staying

For many artists, the creative process begins with the act of observing the outside world. So what becomes visible when we turn our attention to the act of walking itself? Activities such as walking, mountaineering, and pilgrimages can become physical processes that encourage free thought and bring us closer to the sublime, instead of just being a means of getting from one place to another. In this exhibition, works from the museum's collection are presented through the lens of the acts of "walking" or "staying." The exhibited works depict various forms of walking, ranging from the physical act of taking that first step out to observe the outside world, delving into one's own thoughts and memories, and negotiating the various kinds of friction and relationships that arise in the places where the walker is situated. Chiharu Shiota's contribution, A Room of Memory (2009, Gallery 6), focuses on memories of Berlin, the city where she is based. The work is made up of windows that were once used on the former East Berlin side of the Berlin Wall, which Shiota, who saw windows as a kind of "skin that functions as an insurmountable boundary," collected over several years by visiting demolition sites in the area. While the Berlin Wall left behind deep scars of division in the city even after it came down, the windows removed from buildings can be likened to ephemeral fragments of skin, faintly etched with the traces of individuals who used them in their daily lives. As an accumulation of such fragments, this work resembles the structure of the Wall while remaining distinct from it: it is more akin to a layered tapestry of personal memories.