The Japan Foundation has organized Relay to Tokyo—Inheriting and Gathering, an exhibition of contemporary art from Japan at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, Greece. The original plan was for the opening to coincide with the torch handover ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics held in March 2020, but it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With the reopening of museums in Greece, the show has now been rescheduled and is preparing to open while taking sufficient measures to ensure everyone’s safety.

The Relay to Tokyo—Inheriting and Gathering exhibition is a contemporary art exhibition featuring the Olympics and the city of Tokyo as central motifs. Based on the themes of inheriting and gathering, the show provides a taste of Japanese contemporary art through a range of diverse works—including painting, photography, video, installation, and architecture—by six artists and architects. It is the first substantial presentation of Japanese contemporary art in Athens. In the lead-up to the exhibition, an organically shaped tea house pavilion by KUMA Kengo and an installation created onsite for the exhibition by Paramodel Yasuhiko Hayashi are open to the public from June 15.

Outline

Exhibition	Relay to Tokyo—Inheriting and Gathering, an exhibition of contemporary art from Japan
Venue	Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens, Greece
Dates	Wednesday, July 15 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Participating artists	ARAKI Yu, IMAZU Kei, KUMA Kengo, TAKEKAWA Nobuaki, Paramodel Yasuhiko Hayashi, HONJO Naoki
Organizers	The Japan Foundation, Byzantine and Christian Museum
Curation	MATSUNAGA Shintaro, Yokohama Museum of Art curator Effie Meramveliotaki, Byzantine and Christian Museum curator

Texts from both exhibition catalogs available online!

The Relay to Tokyo—Inheriting and Gathering exhibition, planned to coincide with the torch handover ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, was originally due to run alongside the Kitaōji Rosanjin exhibition that presented selected works from Setagaya Art Museum’s Shioda Collection. The Rosanjin exhibition wasn't able to take place as scheduled, so in order to allow as many people as possible to learn about the shows, texts from both exhibition catalogs are available online on this webpage.

 

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  Yu Araki’s Temple of the Templet, 2016.
  Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka (Qsyum!).
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  Kei Imazu’s Repatriation, 2015 in Ryutaro Takahashi Collection (oil on canvas).
  Photo: Keizo Kioku, courtesy of ANOMALY.

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  Naoki Honjo, Minato City in Tokyo, 2008
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  Nobuaki Takekawa, Cat Olympics: Opening Ceremony, 2019,　Copyright of the artist, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts　Installation view: Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019