30 Years on from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake　1995 ⇄ 2025 Our Lives from January 17, 1995

Three decades on from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, we present 1995 ⇄ 2025 Our Lives Since January 17, 1995.

The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (1970–2001), predecessor of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, also suffered heavy damage to its building and collection in the earthquake of January 17, 1995. This museum, which opened in 2002 as a cultural symbol of the quake recovery, has staged associated exhibitions each milestone year since the disaster, but this is the first independently organized exhibition of this sort to be held in the special exhibition space.

In the 30 years from 1995 to 2025 the world has suffered a stream of natural disasters and armed strife, including the 9/11 attacks on the United States (2001), the Tohoku quake and tsunami (2011), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (2022), the latest armed conflict between Israel and Hamas (starting 2023), and the Noto Peninsula earthquake (2024). It is certainly becoming harder to imagine a bright future. So what kind hope do we seek in such times?

This exhibition aims to provide a setting for the ongoing consideration of this question to which there is no ready answer. The artist and their work, some happening or another, and those who encounter them gather in the setting of an exhibition for a passing moment. Included in the title of this exhibition is our aim, in other words, to make it none other than a departure point for the hopes of those of us alive right now. Our hope is that 1995 ⇄ 2025 Our Lives Since January 17, 1995 provides an opportunity to think about the past 30 years and the next 30, and the future beyond that.

Artist: Kokufu Osamu Tabaimo Tamura Yuichiro Moriyama Mirai Yanagi Miwa Yoneda Tomoko

Organizers: Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, The Kobe Shimbun, The Asahi Shimbun

Sponsors: Ito Cultural Foundation, The Minatobank Foundation for Culture, Kobe Steel, Ltd.

Cooperation: Japan Airlines Co., Ltd.; Canon Marketing Japan Inc.; Research Center for Urban Safety and Security, Kobe University; Kobe Film Office;Shashinkosha Inc.; Nihon Service Co., Ltd.; Hotel Okura Kobe Co., Ltd.;Mount Maya Revitalization Project; Maya Viewline (Maya Ropeway & Maya Cable Railway); Luftzug Co., Ltd.; AGC Inc.; Artist in Residence KOBE (Association HAAYMM);ARTCOURT Gallery; Gallery Koyanagi; ShugoArts