遊花遊月 Yuka Yugetsu
Play with Flower, Play with Moon
Artist in Residence in Noko Island, Fukuoka Japan
Retreat in nature
YukaYugetsu is indeed a peaceful environment where you can enjoy nature,
retreat yourself, gather your thoughts, rest, and contemplate.
This residency does not require artists or researchers to hold exhibitions or produce works. You can wake up to the sound of birds, enjoy the nature of Noko, Fukuoka and recharge your mind and body.
Occasionally, you can swim at the Noko beach, go to the city of Fukuoka for enjoyment. (by 10 minutes ferry) For those staying for an extended period, we plan to ask to share their thoughts and artistic practice with the Fukuoka art community in a talk session to contribute to the local community.
＊Noko Island locates Fukuoka CIty, 10-minutes ferry from Fukuoka.
Story
In 1995, the owner of the Cosmos House by Yayoi Kusama in the Museum City Fukuoka built a new villa in the same location.
It was a place for cherry blossom viewing in spring, fireworks in summer, and the fireplace baking sweet potatoes in winter, where family and friends gathered.
Located on the mountain slope of historic Noko Island, you can see various citrus fruits such as summer oranges, lemons, yuzu, sudachi, and kabosu bear fruit in summer, and you can also enjoy autumn leaves in fall.
The house had been waiting for its owner for long time, but she never returned due to illness. The owner, with affection for the house, put up a calligraphy board with the characters "Yukayugetsu" (Play with flowers, Play with a moon) on its gate.
The new owner has been unable to enjoy this house often but has monthly cleaned it and tended to the plants. The idea arose to make it a quiet place for artists, curators, performers, and those who contemplate art to quietly spend time
and bring life back to this house in the forest.
Yuka Yugetsu is a self-funded, non-profit initiative that aims to provide a space for artists, curators, researchers, writers, performers, and cultural producers to immerse themselves in a quiet environment, reflect, and recharge amidst the natural beauty of Noko Island, located in Fukuoka City.
Our program is not result-driven; instead, we offer time and space for residents to focus on their own artistic practices and research projects.
While we respect the individuality of each resident's work, we sometimes encourage them to engage with the local art community in Fukuoka by organizing public events, such as a talk, lecture, or workshop.
Mission
Resident artists, curators, art thinkers
（At this moment, we do not do an open call, please ask FIKA by email if you are interested: hito@fikafika.net ）
Karina Nimmerfall&Jeff Luckey February 6th to March27th 2025
Yoshinori Niwa and Yelena Maksutay March 27th to May 24th 2024
Tomoya Iwata and Pongsakorn Yananissorn June 2024 (Short stay)
February〜March 2025
Karina Nimmerfall&Jeff Luckey
Karina Nimmerfall is a visual artist and educator based in Berlin and Cologne. Blending documentary and speculative approaches, her work interweaves sculptural installation and language, with various forms of photographic, computer-generated or moving imagery. She has exhibited internationally including at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (DE); Camera Austria, Graz (AT); MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (US); BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna (AT); Francisco Carolinum, Linz (AT); as well as at the Bucharest Biennale 3 and the 8th Havana Biennale. Her work has received numerous awards, most recently the fellowship for contemporary German photography from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation.
During her stay, she will develop a project in cooperation with Kyushu University, Faculty of Design, Department of Design Future (Ariane Beyn and Dr. Madoka Yuki) and the Kyushu University Museum (Dr. Misako Mishima), as part of a research project funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education (Grants in Aid for Scientific Research) on artistic interventions in the science museum. The project stems from an invitation by Ariane Beyn and Dr. Madoka Yuki to a site visit of the Kyushu University Museum during a residency at the BMKOES Artist Studio in Tokyo in the spring of 2023, which led to a conversation about the University Museum’s future and the necessity to question and expand traditional concepts of collecting and display.
Departing from the Kyushu University Museum with its historic building and natural history collection, the project reflects on the museum’s scientific, historical and anthropological narratives through selected objects. Engaging in the question of how the museum can become an active site of radical (hi)storytelling, it follows an associative search that interprets the museum as a landscape-based system of order that extends from the physical spaces of the museum and its collection to the city and beyond to the imaginary.
Jeff Luckey is a visual artist based in Berlin, Germany. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Photography from the University of Georgia (US) in 1997, a Master Class Certificate in Photography from Bard College (US) in 2002 (under Professor Stephen Shore), and a Master's Degree in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College (US) in 2005.
In his work, he explores both the visible and invisible infrastructures of contemporary life and image production. Removed from their original context and transferred into abstract representations, the work investigates socio-cultural references and narratives, inviting a dialogue about the interconnectedness of our society and the often overlooked elements that shape our daily experiences.
June 2024
Tomoya Iwata & Pongsakorn Yananissorn
Tomoya Iwata (b. 1995, Aichi) completed his MA from the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. His research focuses on the history of curation and curators, as well as exploring the possibility/impossibility of understanding others beyond human beings through exhibition practices. Through on-site research, Iwata frequents alternative spaces in various cities, mainly in Asia, to further understand the dynamics between institutional and alternative art scenes in their individual context. Currently the representative director of the curatorial space, The 5th Floor. Major exhibitions include: “ANNUAL BRAKE” (The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022/2023), “Things named [things]” (solo exhibition by Anais-karernin; The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2023), “la chambre cocon” (Cité internationale des arts, Paris, 2023), “between / of” (The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022). Participated in a Curator in Residence program at Cité internationale des arts, Paris in 2023. Invited to the “Ideas Forum” in Taipei Dangdai 2023 as a guest speaker. (Photo by Linda Bujoli)
Pongsakorn Yananissorn (b.1994) is an artist and independent curator working around instigating and creating different modes of living and working together through employing shared fictions, stringing forgotten pasts to unrealized futures. He curated projects such as Crypto for Cryptids, JWD Artspace, Bangkok (2021) and Talk-Talk Vilion Pavilion, Bangkok Biennial, Bangkok, (2021) and PostScripts, Bangkok Biennial, Bangkok (2018) among others. He co-founded Plaza Projects, Vancouver (2016) as well as starting a new phase of Speedy Grandma Gallery, Bangkok (2020). Currently, he is a member of collectives, Charoen Contemporaries, Bangkok (2018) as well as This Useful Time Machine (2020). He is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand.
March to May 2024
Yoshinori Niwa & Yelena Maksutay
Born in 1982. Niwa lives and works in Vienna, Austria. His works all bear self-explanatory, slogan-like titles, and are executed primarily on the street and in public spaces, experimenting with actions and propositions and exposing the systems of exchange that drive contemporary society. His work has been exhibited internationally; recent exhibitions include “8th Yokohama Triennale” (Yokohama Museum of Art, 2024), “Bucharest Biennale 10” (Bucharest, Romania, 2022), “Disposing of Hitler. Out of the Cellar, Into the Museum” (House of Austrian History, Vienna, 2021), “Time for Outrage! Art in times of Social Anger” (Kunstpalast Museum, Düsseldorf, 2020), “steirischer Herbst“18” (Graz, 2018), “Setouchi Triennale 2016” (Naoshima, 2016), “MAM Screen 005: Niwa Yoshinori Selected Video Works” (Mori Art Museum, 2016) “Historically Historic Historical History of Communism” (Edel Assanti, London, 2015), “Our Beloved World” (Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015), “Aichi Triennale 2013” (Aichi Arts Centre, etc, 2013), “Roppongi Crossing 2013: Out of Doubt” (Mori Art Museum, 2013),“Double Vision: Contemporary Art from Japan” (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Haifa Museum of Art, 2012). His work is included in international collections including the KADIST Foundation, Paris/San Francisco, the Otazu Foundation, Spain, Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw, Mori Art Museum and Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. https://yoshinoriniwa.com/