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manda coal mines

Copy of [CS6]ura tomosada_edited.jpg

arao, kumamoto, japan

IMG_1195.JPG

miike echo

NEW 

○ Exhibition Period: February 7 (Tue.) - April 2 (Sun.)

○ Venue:  Manda Coal Mine Station - Former Coal Mine

                  (World Heritage Site)

  〒864-0001 熊本県荒尾市原万田200番地2

○ Time: 9:30 - 17:00 Last Admission 16:30

○ Closed on Mondays

○ Entry Fee:

    Adults 410 yen (320)

    High School Students: 310 yen (240)

   JHS and ES students; 210 yen (160)

〇 TEL:  0968- 57-9115

○email: info@arao-kankou.jp

Please see below for the flyer download. 

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《 Miike echo》 2022
video (9m22s),glass door,vibration speaker

I have looked at the symbolic places, things and situations across local regions and combined and moved them, by doing so the ever present scenery changes. In 2021, I visited the former Miike coal mine and stayed for a few months to begin to explore what was in the background. Though it was only a short time, I was able to research the history and scenes of this place to start feeling familiar enough to create works inspired from those stories and places from my own experience. 

I believe the blessings and distortions of energy and the dependencies on them in today's world are becoming increasingly apparent and complex. As a result, I feel that this once prosperous place is building up in it's own unique way. This exhibition focuses on research and production in 2021, with the Manda Coal Mine as the stage to host and introduce a mix of people, sounds and images from other places as a way to present a new perspective to visitors.

TOMOSADA Mutsumi

Artist

                                                   

                                                  

The entrance to a huge underground tunnel, Manda Coal Mine.  

The number of people that used to come and go through there is unfathomable.  

The huge entrance becomes like an opening, the absence of the very thing that made it what it was attracts us to it even now. 

The roads continuing inside the tunnels, the life that blossomed at the entrance of the mines.  Standing in the cavernous absence, our minds ruminate. 

Tomosada's approach to this absence is somewhat serene. 

He is not mixing, but rather honestly extending to us the present we see, the past that we experience in the present, and the past that once was all gently bundled together. 

In this way, we are left able to break it down, stack it up and muse around. 

The present and the past, here and somewhere not here, each of the materials used

along with the fact that we are on the same grounds create a work that seems to jump off the screen. 

I believe here you will find a physical experience faithful to, and intertwining us to, a distant and yet familiar place. 

MIURA Rie

( Ube Tokiwa Museum, UBE Biennale Secretariat in Ube, Yamaguchi )

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