Atlas of Japanese Ostracon (Kyomachi, Otsushi, Shiga) 2014

For his ‘Atlas of Japanese Ostracon’ project, Yuta Nakamura collected potsherds (ceramic fragments) from Japan’s former pottery-producing regions, such as Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture, where shards litter the rivers and beaches, and the foothills of Mount Atago in Kyoto, where unglazed pottery was tossed according to local custom. Other fragments were sourced from domestic architecture, particularly aging tiles that had fallen away from the surface of twentieth-century housing. The artist presents the potsherds in elegant displays alongside postcards and texts identifying their source, evoking images of each region and the lifestyle of a given era. Nakamura’s ‘Atlas’ excavates and orders more than cultural objects; it explores moments of regional history when kōgei (craft) operated at the intersection of art and architecture, embodied in techniques that disappeared in the wake of industrialisation — of which only fragments remain.