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Thursdays at Villa Kujoyama: the program for September 4, 2025

Thursdays at Villa Kujoyama

04 sep. 2025Villa Kujoyama

Dates

04 sep. 2025

14 h - 21 h

Venue and informations

Villa Kujoyama
17-22 Hinookaebisudanichō, Yamashina Ward, Kyoto, 607-8492

Free admission

Program

Program subject to change.
Schedule will be updated on this page.

Please note that Villa Kujoyama has no parking facilities for cars, only bicycle parking.

14:00 – 18:30 – Studios

Open studios by Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust & Grégoire Schaller, Agathe Charnet, Théo Mouzard & Marine Royer and Vincent Tuset-Anrès

14:00 – 18:30 – Salon

Presentation of his research by Guillaume Lehoux

All day long – Patio South

Exhibition of the piece The Weeping Lotus by Mona Oren

18:00 – 19:10 – Auditorium

Visual concert : niwashi no Yume (The Gardener’s Dream), by Rhizottome (2015 residents Armelle Dousset (accordion) & Matthieu Metzger (sopranino saxophone), Kohsetsu Imanishi (Koto musician) and Akito Sengoku (time painting)

19:30 – 20:00 – Auditorium

#5 – The Suicide : performance by Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust & Grégoire Schaller

20:00 – 21:00 – Salon

Cocktail

Projects

Agathe Charnet (2025, theater)

Himono-onna: What to bring into the world today?

Agathe Charnet’s project aims to draw a sensitive and well-documented portrait of what it means to “choose or not to choose to start a family at the dawn of the 21st century,” through a comparative lens between France and Japan. Rooted in a feminist perspective, the project explores the current state of struggles for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights in Japan, as well as the varying conceptions of romantic love. By intertwining life experiences shaped by such different cultural contexts, the project seeks to weave connections and dialogue through words shared during interviews and on-site workshops. The ultimate goal is to write a theatrical play that can be staged in both countries.

Grégoire Schaller et Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust (2025, dance)

Love to Death

Love to Death draws upon Yūkoku (Rite of Love and Death), the only film directed by Yukio Mishima, shot in 1966. It is a closed-door drama set in a Noh theatre, in which Mishima plays a lieutenant who chooses seppuku after the failure of a coup d’état, joined in death by his wife. Darius and Grégoire’s project will take the form of a series of five performances that follow the structure of the film—not to recreate its narrative, but to explore a performative vocabulary around the representation of death. Nourished by a plurality of mediums—dance, photography, metalwork, text, textile, video, and costume—as well as the practice of butoh, the performances will use the film’s photograms as choreographic molds, distorted and unfolded in space, in search of a dense presence specific to the quest to embody the image.

Vincent Tuset-Anres (2025, design)

A panorama of the artist’s book in Japan

Using the artist’s book as a jumping board, Vincent Tuset-Anrès proposes to examine the entire ecosystem of Japanese art publishing. His project sets out to shed light on its procedures and know-how; its technical, aesthetic and conceptual particularities, as well as contemporary practices. By working in Japan, he will be in contact with people who work in the art publishing world whose expertise will add to his research. Following this period of fieldwork, he hopes to present his project to a wider public, with the aim of eliciting new models for a sector that is currently in transition. In this way, Vincent Tuset-Anrès seeks to showcase the rich tradition of art publishing in Japan, the excellence of its artisans, and the inventiveness and vitality of the contemporary scene.

Mona Oren (2025, crafts)

Haze wax, a treasure to explore

Mona Oren’s work revolves around an emotional core woven from impermanence and memory, embodied in a material that reflects this sensitivity: white wax. For her, wax is not merely a substance, but a living material. Her encounter with haze wax in 2022 led to numerous experiments aimed at finding blends that would allow her to sculpt this highly singular, plant-based material. She now wishes to continue this exploration, focusing on wax, hazé trees, and other materials unique to Japan—such as rice wax, washi paper, and sumi ink sticks. The resulting body of work will highlight the poetry of the creative process itself, with the final pieces acting as mirrors of original artifacts—echoes of their memory and transformation.

Guillaume Lehoux (2025, Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand ®)

As a laureate of the Liliane Bettencourt for the Intelligence of the Hand® spending a one-month residency at Villa Kujoyama, Guillaume Lehoux explores the graphic and plastic possibilities of a singular means of representing space. He will apply this to the study of Japanese architecture, past and present – specifically a study of the physical depth of spaces and how this can be translated through graphic means. During his residency, Guillaume Lehoux will explore sites – through planned visits and spontaneous discoveries – that will become the subject of a production on his return to France.

Théo Mouzard et Marine Royer (2025, architecture/landscape architecture/urbanism)

The architecture of afterwards – Post-disaster care and repair in rural Japan: from resource to place, from landscape to object

Since the Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the topics of care and repair have reshaped thinking across every generation of architect and designer in Japan. If we are to achieve “ecological redirection” (Monnin, 2024), we must end new builds, question the limits of urban lifestyles, and involve and empower communities, especially the most vulnerable. These optimistic, hope-filled practices give rise to action in the field, particularly in more rural areas, and collaborative practices focused on specific resources and know-how. Royer and Mouzard intend to follow two lines of research: “from resource to place” and “from landscape to object”.

Armelle Dousset et Matthieu Metzger (Rhizottome) (2015, music)

Niwashi no yume

The duo Rhizottome, composed of Armelle Dousset and Matthieu Metzger (2015, music), presents “niwashi no yume”, the result of a collaboration with Kohsetsu Imanishi and Akito Sengoku that began in 2015 during their residency at the Villa. This visual concert explores the organic connections between traditional music and improvisational practices. A reunion concert in this auditorium, where the piece premiered ten years ago.

Photographs and videos will be taken during the event, on which you may be visible. We thank you for your understanding.

TORO café will be selling snacks from 3 pm to 7 pm !

Crédits

Matériaux : cire Hazé, cire du riz, cire de noix de coco

Dimensions : 60 x 40 x 1,5 cm