Presented by the Taguchi Art Collection (TAC), which has held 13 exhibitions at art museums, MINEBANE! will be its largest ever exhibition featuring 104 works by 81 artists. The title is a word meaning “must-see” in the Akita dialect, a suitable choice as it brings together works by leading figures in contemporary art such as Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Keith Haring, and Damien Hirst, as well as works by internationally diverse artists including Marina Rheingantz (Brazil), Samuel Nnorom (Nigeria) and Lu Yang (China). Out of the 104 works on view, 38 pieces - 34 exhibited works and four screened videos - are being shown for the first time since they are acquired by the TAC.

The works are displayed across four themes, namely “Workings of Nature”, “Human Civilization”, “Monochrome” and “Color.” “Workings of Nature” focuses on depictions of flowers, trees, the earth, sky, and sea, and the living things that inhabit these environments, while “Monochrome” features 30 remarkably original works in tones of black and white. “Human Civilization” comprises works that engage with various aspects of human civilisation, including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and economics. Finally, “Color” centres on abstraction, inviting viewers to engage with works in which artists skilfully use colour to evoke dialogue and personal interpretations.

Video screening programme will also run during the exhibition, held at the auditorium of the Akita Senshu Museum of Art Museum. Six films from the collection will be shown the screening schedule for which can be found on the museum’s website.

ABOUT THE TAGUCHI ART COLLECTION

The Taguchi Art Collection comprises approximately 750 works of contemporary art from around the world, assembled by two generations of the Taguchi family: Hiroshi Taguchi, founder of the Misumi Group, together with his daughter Miwa. Rather than establishing a specific exhibition space, the Taguchis have been actively exhibiting outside the Tokyo metropolitan area where there are few opportunities to see contemporary art - for the duo, building the collection has always been fuelled by their passion to bring contemporary art to the public sphere, making it accessible and more widely experienced.

ABOUT MUHOLI’S SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA (HAIL THE DARK LIONESS) SERIES

This ongoing self-portraiture series began in 2012, is, among many other things, about refusing the exoticising gaze. The images are acts of resistance, referring to personal stories, colonial and Apartheid histories of exclusion and displacement, as well as ongoing racism. This prolific project responds to the near invisibility of Black women and non-binary bodies as subjects of representation in the history of Western painting and portraiture prior to the 20th century.

Muholi turns the camera on themself to explore the politics of race and representation, and to challenge the often-harmful representations of Black people. Using materials and objects sourced from their surroundings and shot in different locations around the world, the artist experiments with different characters and archetypes. Whether using toothpaste mixed with Vaseline as lipstick or an assembly line of clothing pegs to form a headpiece, this body of work utilises elements of performance with the immediacy of both political protest and African informal trade and craft markets. By increasing the contrast of the images which has a darkening effect on their skin, Muholi reclaims their Blackness, something they feel is “continuously performed by the privileged other”.