Emmanuel Guillaud & Takao Kawaguchi

A graduate of École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Paris-Cergy, Emmanuel Guillaud imagines dark and labyrinthine installations; contemporary phantasmagorias composed of multiple projected images. Exhibitions include Until the Sun Rises at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (2010), Singapore Art Museum (2011) and Pavillon Vendôme in Paris (2015), and Untitled, After Piranesi at Institut Francais in Tokyo (2017).

One of Japan’s preeminent contemporary dancers, Takao Kawaguchi performs solo works and collaborations, including ten years with Dumb Type. He has toured extensively with his dance-theatre piece About Kazuo Ohno, including at the Kunsten Arts Festival in Brussels, Alkantara in Lisbon, the Japan Society in New York, REDCAT in Los Angeles and Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

This project came out of an eight-year-long friendship between the two artists, their mutual admiration and an ongoing dialogue that demanded they develop their artistic research in a joint creation, focused on the political and aesthetic implications of desire and the body. During their residency in Kyoto, they set off in search of forgotten figures and lost memories: those of the homosexual loves of gods, warriors and princes which they reactivate in performances where bodies blend with moving images and the past fuses with the present moment.