Image: Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Naha
The museum will present ‘A Giant Standing at the Edge of the Kumui: Yamashiro Kenshin’ and ‘The Flow of Okinawan Art—resonant: A Genealogy of Expressions Resonating Across Time’ from 19 September 2026 through 28 March 2027.
Yamashiro’s work with children emphasized physicality and became a pioneering example of Okinawan Art Brut. Later, while teaching younger artists at Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts, he used familiar materials to explore Okinawan memory and bodily sensation. The presentation aims to show his educational practice, artistic production and spirituality together, while reconsidering his position in postwar art history.
The presentation will occupy Collection Galleries 1, 2 and 3 and the foyer.
The accompanying survey will introduce the development of Okinawan art from before the war and after it, through the period around Okinawa’s reversion, to the present day, drawing on the museum’s collection. Its five chapters address the emergence of modern Okinawan art; postwar activity centered on Nishimui; art’s relationship to social conditions around reversion; the formation of Uchina identity; and practices of representing the body.
