Since 2020, Artizon Museum has been holding its Jam Session exhibitions annually. The sessions feature collaborations between the museum’s Ishibashi Foundation Collection and contemporary artists. This year, “Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection × Yamashiro Chikako × Shiga Lieko – In the midst of” opened on October 11th and runs until January 12th, 2026. Video artist Chikako Yamashiro and photographer Lieko Shiga present unique video and photographic installations that instigate memories etched in wars, natural disasters, migration, and rebirth, in response to inevitable changes in social structures. The artists confront themes of “center and periphery” and “place and memory.” The exhibition title, “In the midst of” pertains to places where things have drifted and merged with those that have been expelled from the mind. New relationships and concepts are born from encounters with multifarious elements. Dual meanings of chance and recovery intersect with external and internal reactions to situations. Both installations serve as “landfills” that embody time, place, the physical body, and recollections. Visitors can contemplate on the complexity of realities woven by history and its influence on the current times.

Chikako Yamashiro, Recalling(s), 2025, from work in progress © Chikako Yamashiro. Courtesy of the artist

In Yamashiro’s work, “Recalling(s)” (2025), several video clips recount anecdotes from people’s war experiences in Okinawa and the horrific firebomb attack on Tokyo by the U.S. Army Air Force in 1945. Her narrative begins with her father’s own memories as a child in Palau, which he revisits mentally in snippets of his aged self wandering through the island’s wilderness. One scene zooms in on the father writing at his desk overflowing with Okinawa’s bright red flame tree flowers. The cinematic impact is quite tantalizing. The gallery’s ambience is enhanced by hanging drapes to imitate a military barrack. Darkness overcasts the hall, diffusing an air of somberness as tales of history’s harsh sufferings resonate. Visitors can watch and listen to interviews, songs, and prayers that revive war images in the eyes of the people. These are staged by singer Teiko Saito, drummer Yoshio Kinjo, pastor Osamu Taira, music performer Shokichi Kina, and Toshiko Kameya, who survived the Tokyo air raids.

Chikako Yamashiro, Recalling(s), 2025, from work in progress © Chikako Yamashiro. Courtesy of the artist

Okinawan native Yamashiro has been conducting visual investigations of the history, politics, and culture of Okinawa. She has also expanded her projects to the East Asian region, tackling issues of identity and sensitive boundaries between life and death. She has exhibited at the White Rainbow, London (2018), and MoMA New York (2025), among other venues. Her various awards include the Zonta Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2018) and the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (2020-2022).