Kyoko Kasuya “Diary of Eve’s Land”

Dates |January 30 – February 16, 2025
Venue|MEM  map
Hours|13:00 – 19:00 (Note: On February 11, general viewing ends at 18:00 due to a talk event.)
Closed | Monday (Open if Monday is a public holiday, closed the following weekday)
Phone | 03-6459-3205

 

Talk & Screening Event
Date & Time|February 11 (Tue, public holiday) 19:00 – 21:00
Speakers|Kyoko Kasuya, Mizuho Yamazaki (Independent Curator, Project Manager & Editorial Coordinator at AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions)

[Screenings]
Listen to the Voices of the Sea (2019, color, sound, 5 min 43 sec)
Silence Bleu (2022, color, sound, 13 min 53 sec)

Venue|MEM
Admission|¥1,200
Capacity|20 people
Reservation only, Japanese version only
The talk will also be live-streamed and available as an archived video from February 12 to March 31, 2025.

Reservations are available through MEM’s online store.

 


 

Diary of Eve’s Land draws from a series of video interviews Kyoko Kasuya conducted in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2023. Through social media, she invited women to participate in the project, ultimately bringing together five individuals from diverse backgrounds: a doctor, a psychologist, a medical student, an IT professional, and an immigrant studying at an online university. Against the backdrop of Saudi Arabia’s sweeping societal transformation under the Vision 2030 government initiative, the work captures candid testimonies and everyday footage of women navigating the tensions between societal expectations and their personal aspirations.

Kyoko Kasuya is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Paris. Originally from Japan, she studied African American literature at Aoyama Gakuin University. After a brief stint as a company employee, she moved to France, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Montpellier School of Fine Arts in 2013. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster marked a pivotal shift in her practice. Urged by her father to remain in France, she began producing works that reexamined her identity through the lens of society and history. Her work engages deeply with archival research, particularly personal diaries and writings left by unknown individuals, challenging conventional historical narratives and emphasizing the significance of shared experiences.

Kasuya grew up listening to firsthand accounts from her grandfather about World War II. This personal connection later led her to engage with the diaries of student soldiers like Hachirō Sasaki and Tokumitsu Takushima, whose writings were compiled in Listen to the Voices From the Sea (Kike Wadatsumi no Koe). These texts were foundational for her films Listen to the Voices of the Sea (2019) and Silence Bleu (2022), screened in Brussels and Prague. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kasuya joined The Crown Letter, an international collective of women artists creating and sharing works on issues related to women. Her work was also featured in KG+ KYOTOGRAPHIE.