In 1951, Shinkichi Tajiri’s GI Bill expired, leaving him in a difficult financial situation. That same year, he presented his sculptures in a solo exhibition at the Parnass Gallery in Wuppertal, where he met Jupp Ernst, the director of the Wuppertal Werkkunstschule. Ernst invited him to be a guest lecturer in form theory and sculpture. To make a living, Tajiri accepted the offer. However, due to prior commitments in Paris, he arrived in Wuppertal later than planned. When he

It was the autumn of 2020. The world was in lockdown, grappling with the Covid pandemic. Around that time, we began cleaning, organizing, and archiving the family house. We started upstairs, in the living areas where my grandparents once lived, and slowly worked our way down toward the studios and workspaces. In one of the bedrooms, tucked away on a shelf inside a cabinet, we stumbled upon a plastic bag filled with old newspaper clippings. Judging by the thick layer of dust,

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the weather at the naval and air bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i, was partly cloudy. The U.S. Weather Bureau in downtown Honolulu reported a temperature of 73°F (23°C) at 7:30 a.m., with a light breeze. Eyewitnesses recalled it as a beautiful Sunday morning with bright blue skies and hardly a cloud in sight. No one could have imagined what was about to happen when Japan launched its surprise attack, drawing the United States into World War I

When we began dismantling Shinkichi Tajiri’s home and studios, we started by sorting through everything room by room. The first step was deciding what to keep and what to discard. Within the “keep” pile, we made a rough division between items that would belong in the archive and those that were of a more personal nature. Because Tajiri often reused boxes, envelopes, and folders, the contents rarely matched their labels. This made it essential to go through every item careful

While reviewing Shinkichi Tajiri’s archive, several early 1950s photographs surfaced of him working on plaster and iron sculptures in his Paris studio alongside another artist whose identity remained unknown until 2024. That year, curator Cecilie Gaihede of the Gerðarsafn Art Museum in Kópavogur contacted the estate for a loan request while preparing Transformation , an exhibition marking the museum’s 30th anniversary. Dedicated to the work of Gerður Helgadóttir, the show al

Eighty years have passed since the skies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned to fire. In just moments, lives were erased, families were shattered, and two cities were changed forever. The bombs fell on August 6 and 9, 1945, killing more than 100,000 people instantly, with many more lost to the lingering effects of radiation and injury. The cities burned for days. Within the week, Japan surrendered, and the war was over, but the grief and the memory would never fade. In an arti

In 2023, I discovered some very early oil paintings on cardboard. A few had pencil dates on the back revealing they were created in 1942, although unfortunately they had no titles. These paintings were made while Shinkichi Tajiri and his family were interned at the Santa Anita Assembly Center during World War II. One of the paintings, rendered in warm brown and yellow tones, is a self-portrait of a young Tajiri.
 Another painting, tinted in blues, depicts a figure holding an

From 13 July -15 September 2024, Endless Imagination was opened to the public at  Museum Cobra . The exhibition features entries for the...

Shinkichi Tajiri: The Restless Wanderer , in collaboration with Bonnefanten, celebrates the centennial of our grandfather, the ...

Since 2019, I have been actively working as a Project Coordinator at Minitopia and RxDOMI . In this role, I served as the main point of...

Storytelling plays a vital role in passing on traditions, understanding cultures, and connecting with one another. Wat een gemier!  is a...

From 2015 to 2020, I collaborated closely with Angelo Vermeulen and the SEADS Network . As the Speaking Engagement and Community...

Founded in 1953 by Zweitse Landsheer and led since 2009 by his daughter Charlotte (Lotte) Landsheer, Cor Unum  is a renowned ceramic...