Sugihara Nobuyuki

Born in Omachi, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in 1980, Sugihara Nobuyuki holds an MFA in Oil Painting from Tokyo University of the Arts. His practice draws on natural environments and ancestral cultures, using site-based research to create large-scale installations and collaborative works with communities from natural materials such as stone, wood, earth, grass, and rope. He has conducted long-term research into Indigenous cultures in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Canada, and has organized the Shinano Province Primitive Sense Art Festival since 2010.

Inspired by the relationship between the old banyan tree in the museum garden and the museum space, Sugihara Nobuyuki and Nakamura Ayaka incorporate ropes made from oyster shells, a material associated with oyster farming in Tainan, to evoke the image of trees reaching toward the light. The work extends the artists’ research into Siraya culture during their residency in Tainan, responding to memories of the Siraya and the former “Taikang Inland Sea.” Interweaving the old banyan tree, Indigenous culture, and maritime imagery, the work reveals the historical traces and vitality of the land across time and space.