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Paper short abstract

This paper focuses on participating artists in contemporary art festivals in rural Japan. Based on ethnographic research, it investigates how artists negotiate their artistic ideas and navigate their careers in the urban-rural dynamics of the Japanese art world.

Paper long abstract

Since 2000, contemporary art festivals are among the most visible measures of rural revitalization in Japan. Each edition of a large-scale art festival, such as Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale or Setouchi Triennale, would attract hundreds of thousands of domestic and international visitors to remote regions in Japan to see hundreds of contemporary artworks. While some artworks would be exhibited across years of time, approximately a hundred new artworks are also produced for a new festival edition, a majority of which by Japanese artists. This phenomenon has, on the one hand, transformed rural localities into art spaces. On the other hand, it has reconfigured Japan’s contemporary art world in its urban-rural dynamics, refashioning the art world that is conventionally characterized by art universities and museums in major cities and galleries in Ginza. What does this mean to participating artists in rural art festivals? Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observation, in this paper I examine artistic ideas and practices at Japanese rural art festivals, and investigates how artists of various calibers strategize their participation in these art festivals while navigating their career journeys in Japan’s art world of the twenty-first century.