Hiroko Inoue “Are They Still Here?”

Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery

This event has ended.

Hiroko Inoue has been active as a contemporary artist in Japan, Germany, and Austria since 1992. After experiencing the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, the emotional pain of isolated people and the boundaries between human beings became a theme of her work. In her acclaimed photography, the windows of mental hospitals and other isolated facilities around the world appear as motifs.

The second floor of Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery presents “Mori” (Forest), a collection of Inoue’s works that send messages to the future through memories of the forest. Depicting the miraculous and overwhelming power of nature as seen in the forests of Japan and Germany, themes of these works include natural light and shadow, the cycles of life and death, the coexistence of people and nature, and what we have conveyed to the next generation. In “Omni-Presence” on the third floor, Inoue portrays people in Japan and Germany who have been left behind and forgotten in consumerist society amid these countries’ pursuits of economic growth after the second World War, showing the places where these people spend their lives and tracing the trajectories of their souls. These works ask how we can understand and connect to these people, which we view through single windows.

[Related Event]
Opening Reception and Talk
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art curator Hitoshi Dehara, who has long been familiar with Inoue’s work, will give a talk.
Date: Apr. 12 (Sat)
Gallery Talk: 17:00–18:00
Reception: 18:00–20:00