2000 Welcome to the County Gallery of Sogn og Fjordane!

his was another project realised during my stay in Dale, Norway as part of the artist-in-residence programme. I asked the local residents in Forde, Norway, to submit things they thought useful in their daily life. I juxtaposed these objects of the twentieth century with the permanent collection displays of nineteenth century Romantic Norwegian paintings at the County Gallery of Sogn og Fjordane in Norway. Each display, including the Norwegian paintings, was accompanied by a display caption in Japanese, and documented in a catalogue. The display captions for the useful objects explained why the owner of the object found it useful.

In this project, I wanted to make use of one of my abilities speciŸc to my culture; communicating in Japanese. Translating the descriptions for the exhibits into my mother tongue and displaying them in a local gallery in Norway ultimately reÛected my response to Norwegian culture. At the same time, the parallel exhibits of Norwegian culture with display captions in Japanese created a unique space where the audience could contemplate their own culture in comparison with a foreign culture.