Nairobi Residence 2011

The first edition of an artist-in-residence programme inviting leading Japanese artists to Nairobi for a period of on-site production. Sculptor Akira Higashi and artist Megumi Matsubara spent a month across various districts of Nairobi, collaborating with local artists, craftspeople, and residents to create and exhibit new work. Working with their own distinctive perspectives and sensibilities, the artists encountered fields in which to exercise their creativity, building new relationships with the community through the process of production.

Akira Higashi created a nest-like bench sculpture among the street furniture workshops of the jua kali craftspeople; even after his return to Japan, it has continued to serve as a resting spot for the furniture makers. On his days off, he visited a Pentecostal church, where he and the children there launched parachute works made from garbage bags and curtains found around Nairobi. Megumi Matsubara, in collaboration with Nairobi-based artist Otieno Kota, treated a massive billboard in the informal settlement of Kibera as a canvas, hanging white cloth from it and projecting photographs of everyday life in Kibera onto the fabric. Drawing on her personal experiences in Nairobi, she also reworked existing newspapers and sold them like a street newspaper vendor at a roadside stand, sharing subjective memories with passersby.

Artist Biographies

Akira Higashi was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1974 and lives in Kyoto. He graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts in 1998, where his graduation work received the Kyoto Mayor’s Award. His works come into being only through the direct involvement of the viewer as user, forming a relationship with the audience that is newly constructed each time. He attempts to give form to, and draw out, aspects of ordinary daily life, building structures from readily available materials such as branches, cloth, and vinyl. Recent exhibitions include “bed” (solo exhibition, Art Space Niji, Kyoto, 2002), “Hana, Odoru — dances de la fleur” (Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Yamaguchi, 2009), and “Kyo-Sei” (@KCUA, Kyoto, 2010). He also participated in the residency programme “Forces of Nature” (North Carolina, 2006). http://akirahigashi.com/

Megumi Matsubara was born in Tokyo in 1977 and lives in Tokyo. She has co-run the studio assistant since 2002 and lived in the United Kingdom from 2003 to 2005, completing an MA at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, in 2004. She works both through the architecture studio assistant and on her own individual projects, crossing installation, performance, and text on a foundation of architectural thinking to question the balance between presence and absence. Recent activities include, with assistant, selection for the “SD Review” (2010) and the exhibition design for the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (2009); and, as an individual, “PUBLISHED” (solo exhibition, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2009), “Emporium” (Museo Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 2009), and a project in Lagos (supported by the Japan Foundation, 2009). http://megumimatsubara.com/