Knitting Horn Covers for a Muskox & The Blind Humans and The Elephant

Shiro Masuyama is a Japanese artist based in Belfast since 2010. He initially trained as an architect and his practice is based around creating site-specific intervention that connects communities and explores identity. Using his architectural background, he makes projects which fundamentally connect people and society: socially engaged art. His practice relies on travelling and engaging with people all over the world, developing links between the world there and the world here. Over the past ten years part of this has been looking at the effects of industrialisation on traditional ways of life. This exhibition represents 2 new projects from 2023 that are the culmination of this work.

Knitting horn covers for a muskox is a video work made after a residency period in Alaska and Greenland. The work is the last in a wider series called Self-Sufficient Life that looks at the decline of traditional wool industries. Muskox have survived from the ice-age but are endangered and only native now in the Arctic Circle, though there is a farm in Alaska that breeds them for their fur, Qiviut, the most expensive wool in the world. He spent time with the American muskox farmers in Alaska and then Inuit hunters in Greenland, who hunt muskoxen for food as well as their qiviut. Horns symbolize the wildness of animals; covering a muskox with their own fur is a metaphor for controlling the wild. The project focuses on the relationships between indigenous and immigrant, between wild animals and domesticated animals, between humans and animals, and even humans and nature.

The Blind Humans and the Elephant was made after residency in New Delhi & Kerala, India. New Delhi is currently known as one of the most polluted cities in the world and the artist experienced the reality of environmental pollution in daily life there. He stayed in Kerala to research both wild elephants and domesticated elephants used for religious festivals as a holy animal. Afterwards, with the help of elephant owners and elephant care takers in Kerala,the artist made a series of videos documenting the elephants crushing various industrial products that are some of the causes of environmental pollution.

The title refers to the traditional Indian parable of Blind men and an elephant. It’s about a group of blind men who attempt to learn what an elephant is, each touching a different part, and disagreeing on their findings, losing a more comprehensive and accurate understanding.

Both projects question how our identity changes as the rate of industrialisation changes the way of life. Northern Ireland has changed exponentially in the last 20 years with the levels of immigration rising every year. The exhibition will ask what identity means to us and how it can evolve and change as our way of life changes.

Shiro Masuyamaha mainly developed his art practice through participating in Artist-in-residence worldwide including National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, (2008); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2004-2005) and ISCP, New York (2002-2003). Following international residencies in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2006 and Flax Art Studios, Belfast in 2009, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he has been based ever since. As an artist from Japan who has made their home in Northern Ireland, he is in a unique position to question how identity can be influenced by the dominant political forces surrounding us.

He has had numerous solo exhibitions including ‘Talking to the Animals in the End of the World’, CAI03, Sapporo, Japan (2024); ‘Brexit Sausages’, Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Belfast (2022); ‘Coexistence’, Siamsa Tíre – National Folk Theatre of Ireland, Tralee (2019); ‘Self Sufficient Life’, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown (2015); ‘Intervention’, Water and Sculpture Hills Ichihara Museum, Chiba, Japan (2010). He has participated group shows including ‘BIENULSUR 2021: The State of Things’, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rosario, Argentina; ‘Sapporo International Art Festival 2020: Of Roots and Clouds’, Japan (Canceled due to COVID-19, 2020); ‘Noise of Silence: Japanese Art Now’, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2019); ‘Aichi Triennale 2013: Awakening’, Nagoya, Japan (2013). He has completed a public art commission ‘Five Apples’, Ballymena, Northern Ireland (2015). He has received numerous awards including Toshiaki Ogasawara Memorial Foundation, Japan (2023-2024); Chris Ledger Legacy Awards, Northern Ireland (2021); Japan Foundation Asia Center (2017-2018); Individual Artist’s Award, Derry-Londonderry City of Culture (2013); The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York (2009-2010); Japanese Government Oversea Program for Artists (2004-2005); Pola Art Foundation, Japan (2002- 2003).

Part of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics>>