CHISOU Residence: James Muriuki

As part of Nara Prefectural University’s art management training programme “CHISOU,” James Muriuki—an artist and curator based in Nairobi—was invited to Nara. Over the course of a month, he deepened his exchanges with programme participants, artists, and faculty while conducting research into the relationship between soil and people.

The programme began in 2020, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Muriuki’s visit to Nara had been eagerly awaited for three years. His interest in the programme had continued since its first year, and the correspondence project “Round-trip Letters” allowed the relationship and the underlying ideas to deepen over time.

Muriuki has long focused his camera on vast landscapes, drawn to soil as the source of everything in both human society and the natural world. In Nara, he visited the Kasugayama Primeval Forest, Nara Park, and local farmers’ markets, shifting the scale of his perspective and launching a project that engages with images of soil viewed through a microscope lens. Toward the end of his stay, he attempted a modest performance to creatively share, in a public space, the ideas he had developed during the residency.