“Roppongi Crossing” is a series of co-curated exhibitions staged every three years by the Mori Art Museum. It was first launched in 2004 to provide a snapshot of the contemporary Japanese art scene at a particular point in time. This seventh edition is to showcase works by 22 Japanese artists (all born between the 1940s and 1990s) and artist groups, in an exciting cross-section of creative output by young promising artists as well as well-established artists recognized in the international art scene.

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, our lives have changed dramatically. These changes have revealed many hitherto hidden, or at least hard to see, aspects of Japanese society, prompting us to revisit and reconsider familiar aspects of our everyday environments previously taken for granted. They have also brought to light the presence and diversity of those living alongside through these tumultuous times. Now, with people once more on the move and growing expectations of new cultural creativity, we are reminded of the fact that various ethnic groups do live in “Japan” and that country already possesses multifarious layers of history and culture. What kind of future can we now imagine and build together?

The subtitle of Roppongi Crossing 2022, “Coming & Going,” suggests the need to reacknowledge that people’s inward and outward movements and repeated interactions with other cultures throughout Japan’s complex history have indeed made this country a place where a wide variety of people and cultures coexist. At the same time, it also expresses a desire for those “comings and goings” brought to a halt by the pandemic to resume.

It is in this context that we take a fresh, more wide-ranging look than ever at the characteristics of contemporary art and creative scene of Japan today, and inviting visitors to join us in pondering the imponderable nature of tomorrow.

Photo credits:
Artist Name: Kanagawa Shingo
Title of the work: for a while
2011
Inkjet print
28.3 x 35.7 cm