The work of KUMO (YUKI MORITA & RYUDAI MISAWA), consisting of Ryudai Misawa (4th year, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) and Yuki Morita (Graduate, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) from Professor Akira Wakita's laboratory, has been selected for the 29th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art.
The Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art is organized by the Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki. It is one of Japan's most prestigious art awards, honoring experimental and challenging expressions in contemporary art. For this 29th edition, 21 groups of artists were selected from a total of 644 entries.
KUMO's (YUKI MORITA & RYUDAI MISAWA) work, "Your Discipline," is an interactive installation themed around the nature of discipline and norms. In a modern era where the formation of discipline—once the responsibility of schools and social systems—is shifting toward platforms like social media and AI, the work was selected for its physical and experiential questioning of how we voluntarily submit ourselves and continue to consume information.
Selected Work
Your Discipline
KUMO (YUKI MORITA & RYUDAI MISAWA)
Comment from Ryudai Misawa
I am truly honored to receive such an award.
As a generation of students who grew up as digital natives, we are the ones whose definitions of discipline and "happiness" have been rapidly rewritten by environments such as schools, social media, and AI. I believe that only by understanding the dynamics behind discipline and expanding our imagination beyond the discipline we believe in can we finally step outside the prison. I would be happy if this work encourages people to take such questions home with them.
Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the judges, Professor Akira Wakita and everyone in the Wakita Laboratory, and all those who supported us.
Source: Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office, General Affairs