Image: Cai Guo-Qiang, Cultural Melting Bath: Project for Naoshima, 1998. Benesse Art Site Naoshima
Benesse Art Site Naoshima has resurfaced an archived article about Cai Guo-Qiang's 'Cultural Melting Bath: Project for Naoshima' (1998), the bath work at Benesse House that invites visitors into a bath-based encounter shaped by the artist's idea of cultural exchange. The organisation's post, flagged as an archive item, recalls that the project has long been appreciated by Benesse House guests and travellers who immerse themselves in the hot water, using the experience as a way to cross generations and cultures.
The work belongs to the Naoshima network of art and architecture run by Benesse Art Site Naoshima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, and the organisation notes that Cai was the first recipient of the Benesse Prize, launched in Venice in 1995. 'Cultural Melting Bath: Project for Naoshima' grew out of Cai's earlier 'Cultural Melting Bath: Project for the 20th Century', shown at the Queens Museum in New York, and was remade to suit this particular stretch of Naoshima coastline.
According to the site text, the project links bathing with a broader set of ideas about modernity, technology, traditional culture and nature. Those themes are described through elements including a jet bath and taihu stones, with the Naoshima installation enlarging the original concept into a site-specific work that was shaped for its setting. The museum’s account says that even after more than 20 years, the work’s basic presentation remains unchanged, including the custom of bathing in water prepared with herbal medicine.
The relaunch was announced in a blog post dated 4 August 2020, after a period in which the bathing experience had been suspended. Benesse Art Site Naoshima says the bathing programme restarted in spring 2020, following work begun in 2018, and that the renewed presentation also brought a revised outdoor arrangement and a renovated changing hut.
The changing hut, described as a small structure with a Chinese-style tiled roof and cedar boards set in the woods, serves as the place where bathing participants change into swimsuits. For the relaunch, Benesse Art Site Naoshima says the hut was altered so that even visitors who do not bathe can view the work as an outdoor installation. The space now includes a display of photographs and a 'dragon vein map' that had been used when the work was first installed, tracing the flow of energy in the site.
The organisation says those decisions were taken together with the artist, with the aim of deepening the bathing experience, and describes the hut's opening as framing a view of the Seto Inland Sea that shifts a visitor's perspective before entering the bath. The work remains in place today: Benesse Art Site Naoshima's current listing offers the herbal-medicine bath on Sundays and restricts it to Benesse House overnight guests, while the outdoor installation can be seen by other visitors.
