{"id":2473,"date":"2017-05-19T09:49:48","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T00:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/japan-alps-art-festival-2017\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:35:18","slug":"japan-alps-art-festival-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/japan-alps-art-festival-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Alps Art Festival 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/about-jp\/about-en\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32592\" src=\"http:\/\/japaninfoswap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Japan-Alps-Arts-Festival.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"278\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While the area is famous for hiking in summer and skiing in winter, when one thinks of the mountanous prefecture of Nagano, art isn&#8217;t exactly the first thing that springs to mind. However, this preconception may be about to change.<\/p>\n<p>Up in the northwest of the prefecture, from\u00a0early June to the end of July, the city\u00a0of Omachi will play host to the first ever Japan Alps Art Festival.<\/p>\n<h2>About the\u00a0Japan Alps Art Festival<\/h2>\n<p>The festival is the brainchild of Fram Kitagawa,\u00a0an experienced\u00a0festival director and head of the\u00a0Art Front Gallery in Daikanyama who\u00a0was also\u00a0an adviser to Culture City of East Asia 2016 and the director of\u00a0Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. Kitagawa has used this expertise to bring this festival together with the stated aim of seeing the art and artists feed the imagination and understanding of visitors, much in the same way that the water cascading down the mountains has &#8220;grown rich forests, cultivated unique lifestyle and nurtured distinctive culinary culture of the region&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It is not only the artwork that is on display that is a\u00a0draw to the festival, but the aforementioned local cuisine goes some way to enhancing the unique atmosphere. On top of all of this the festival&#8217;s setting &#8211; with the immense\u00a0Kurobe dam covered in artwork and its\u00a0backdrop of 3,000m peaks &#8211; only adds to the artistic visage of this extraordinary festival.<\/p>\n<h2>Artists to look out for at the Japan Alps Art Festival<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_32594\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32594\" style=\"width: 642px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sagg.info\/odyssey-navigating-nameless-seas\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32594\" src=\"http:\/\/japaninfoswap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Alfredo-and-Isabel-Aquilizan.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"642\" height=\"428\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-32594\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Passage III Project Another Country by Alfredo &amp; Isabel Aquilizan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The festival will see around 40 artists gathered from both Japan and the international art community. Below are a handful to look out for.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tadashi Kawamata<\/strong> is an artist who transforms environment. Usually using scrap or reclaimed materials,\u00a0Kawamata sets about building new and unusual structures.<\/li>\n<li><b>Tomoko Fuse<\/b>\u00a0is a Japanese origami artist and author of numerous books on the subject of modular origami, and is by many considered as a renowned master in the\u00a0discipline.<\/li>\n<li>Connected to Kitagawa through the Art Front Gallery, <strong>Toshikatsu Endo<\/strong> is a sculptor who creates monumental sculptures using basic elements of nature such as soil, water, fire and wind following the materialistic and illusionistic image of these elements to invite the viewers to the origin of their lives.<\/li>\n<li>Finnish\u00a0<strong>Maaria Wirkkala<\/strong> is a sculptor for whom light, space and time is an important part of her artwork.\u00a0Her<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>works are known for a\u00a0possession of poetic emotion, and\u00a0a philosophy on the relationship between humans and nature.<\/li>\n<li>Brisbane based Philippine husband and wife collaborative duo\u00a0<strong>Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan&#8217;s<\/strong>\u00a0projects highlight the faults of modern hybrid living through the use of familiar but meaningful materials such as car parts, beds, and rehabilitation facility sandals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Click <a href=\"http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/artworks-artists\/\">here<\/a> for a full list of artists involved in the festival.<\/p>\n<h2>Festival Details 2017<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Where<\/strong>: Shinano Omachi Station (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.co.jp\/maps\/place\/Shinano-Omachi+Station\/@36.4998991,137.7912208,12z\/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x601d63eb5e6ed1dd:0xd80aa4cc4560c3d2!8m2!3d36.4999084!4d137.8612518\">map<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong>When: <\/strong>June 4 to July 30, 2017<\/li>\n<li><strong>Website:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/about-jp\/about-en\/\">www.shinano-omachi.jp<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Admission:<\/strong> Adults 2,000 JPY adv, 2,500 JPY on site; high school students 1,000\/1,500 JPY; elementary and junior high school students 300\/500 JPY<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Mark Guthrie<\/p>\n<p>Image by <a href=\"http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/artworks-artists\/artists\/hara\/en\/\">Yu Hara<\/a>,\u00a0via <a href=\"http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/about-jp\/about-en\/\">http:\/\/shinano-omachi.jp\/about-jp\/about-en\/<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; screengrab (modified)<\/p>\n<p>Image courtesy of SAM\u00a0via <a href=\"http:\/\/sagg.info\/odyssey-navigating-nameless-seas\/\">http:\/\/sagg.info\/odyssey-navigating-nameless-seas\/<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; screengrab (modified)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the area is famous for hiking in summer and skiing in winter, when one thinks of the mountanous prefecture of Nagano, art isn&#8217;t exactly the first thing that springs to mind. However, this preconception may be about to change. Up in the northwest of the prefecture, from\u00a0early June to the end of July, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,68,54,82],"tags":[225,69,113,176],"class_list":["post-2473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-festivals","category-japan","category-travel","tag-art-japan","tag-event","tag-nagano-prefecture","tag-tokyo-day-trips"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50934,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions\/50934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}