The Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka and the Kansai Osaka 21st Century Association present a solo exhibition by Kaori Endo as the third show in the Osaka Directory supported by RICHARD MILLE series.

Born in Osaka in 1989, artist Kaori Endo unravels the close relationship between politics and kogei crafts, history, and people’s lives in various parts of the world, producing works that typically involve cloth. The act of “using” her works expresses the place that crafts have in society.

This exhibition presents a dugout canoe made on Ishigaki Island for this show. This traditional wooden boats that have long been used in the Southwest Islands that stretch between Kyushu and Taiwan and include Okinawa. They were used for both fishing and transporting goods until the 1950s. The sail of the boat exhibited here was made from the fibers of the Japanese fiber Ryukyu-banana (Ito-basho) plant that grows on farmland that has been tacitly permitted on the grounds of the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. Endo extracted the fiber herself, wove it into Ryukyu-banana fiber cloth, known as basho-fu, and turned that into a sail. By reference to the legend of Paipateroma—which involves basho-fu cloth and the Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa—and by using Okinawa folkcrafts that incorporate by-products from U.S. bases, the artist directs her gaze at gentle yet poignant human behavior that implies neither weakness nor strength. This installation by Endo allows the viewer to sense the fact that the things people have come to use in their daily lives have a political and historical background to them that is an inseparable part of the memories of the people who live there.

* The Myth of Paipateroma is a mythical island that supposedly lies south of Hateruma, the southernmost island of Okinawa.