Kazushi Nakada – artist in residence

Artist Kazushi Nakada has come to Wroclaw to realize the next installment of his My Archaeology project. This ritual art project, inspired by the interpretation of “time” and “end” of life in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, has so far been carried out in 18 countries. Poland is the next one.

A Japanese artist who divided his life into Europe and Japan, has the tools to correctly interpret European contexts and build a relationship with Japanese culture and customs. He will observe one of the EU countries’ societies as a “local European citizen” and as an “outsider”. His process is based on the collection of memories from local people, which are the output for the creation of glass objects symbolizing a particular story.

Nakada’s art expresses a social and political question. Interested in the whole entity of human beings and what is happening around the world, he comes to Wroclaw, Poland to contextualize his processes with native stories. Nakada creates an original and a copy of the object. After documenting the project process, the participant buries the original object in the ground as a cultural message for future generations. Artist records everything on video and creates a series of photographs.

The project is aimed at people who want to learn about the historical threads and contexts of Wroclaw through personal and intimate stories and those who are willing to share them. Kazushi Nakada’s residency runs from November 10 to 25, 2024. The artist will create ceramic objects reproducing human hands folded in prayer.

Kazushi Nakada

Kazushi Nakada is an Japaneese artist from a ceramics family. His artwork is shown in Europe, Asia, and the US. He also taught and gave lectures at universities in Europe and Asia as a lecturer and professor. He was born in Japan, studied in the UK, and worked in Denmark and Finland. Lately he opened a Shanghai studio.  

He is the third generation of a ceramic family. His grandfather, Rokusaburo Nakada, was a potter, and his father was a prominent ceramist who received the Zuiho Medal from the Japanese government.

Kazushi pursued his own creative endeavors and established careers outside of Japan. However, his working attitude is influenced by Japanese traditional ceramics, spending time in a studio, and hand-making.