"Art is the ability to turn one's gaze to the world of oblivion." This is the way in which I understand art at fundamental level.

Leonard de Vinci, for example, is a great artist, but he is living in the past. However, I don't feel John Cage and Matsuzawa Yutaka as artists who live in the past. Their ideas are still alive in our world because they express the very important concerns of our age. That is why I could trust them as "contemporary artists".

I think it is important to be aware that the Internet has replaced the television, and has become a place where the uniformity of human society is accelerated.

To think about "oblivion" is to think about "what art is".

I planned the exhibition so that it becomes a story where the viewer travels through these islands [of ideas]. Whether the contents of each chapter came first or the artist came first in making the decision was different in each case.

"Art is the ability to turn one's gaze to the world of oblivion." This is the way in which I understand art at fundamental level.

I was worried that I, the artist Morimura, would have conflicts with the participating artists and develop a strenuous relationship with them. But the actual experience was completely the opposite. The artists accepted my requests rather positively, because it came from a fellow artist. I strongly feel that the fact that my being an artist avoided the usual curator vs artist tension, and led to creating a positive atmosphere as well as developing a solidarity amongst artists and building a community for artists.