‘Two Seas’ – Photo Collages by Ikuru Kuwajima

On Saturday, 14 June 2025, at 12:30 p.m., the Künstlerhaus will open an exhibition by scholarship holder Ikuru Kuwajima as part of this year’s ‘Meeresrausch’ festival organised by ‘Kulturnetz Eckernförde’.

In the exhibition, Japanese-born artist Ikuru Kuwajima follows in the footsteps of the famous German architect Bruno Taut. The concept of the project is based on a text by the Königsberg-born architect Bruno Taut, who escaped Nazi regime in the 1930s and spent the rest of his life in Japan and Turkey. While travelling along the north-west coast of Japan, he discovered that the Japanese landscape – the thatched roofs, the sand, the pine trees and the sea – resembled the Baltic coast of his native East Prussia, which is now divided between Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

Following this observation, Ikuru Kuwajima has been photographing landscapes along the Baltic Sea coast for years and creating photo-based paper collages using the traditional Japanese chigirie technique. The resulting series of triptychs is his interpretation of the gaze of an exiled architect, nostalgically remembering the Baltic coast from the distant coast of Asia on the threshold of World War II – a conflict that drastically reshaped the geography and demography of the Baltic region.

From April to June 2025, he will be a scholarship holder at the Schleswig-Holstein Künstlerhaus otte1, where he continues his project.

Opening and artist talk on Saturday, 14 June at 12:30 p.m.
Exhibition opening hours: Saturday, 14 June and Sunday, 15 June, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.