by the mountain path: Masaya Chiba, Chim↑Pom, hyslom, Hidemi Nishida, Ryohei Usui and Yui Yaegashi, White Rainbow

White Rainbow, London
Barely half a year old, London’s White Rainbow gallery has achieved a curatorial coup with its next show of six Japanese artists who have never been seen in the UK before. One of the exhibitors, the Chim↑Pom collective, just won Emerging Artists of the Year in the Prudential Eye Awards for contemporary Asian art.
Chim↑Pom | Fukushima
For those that aren't familiar with the 'enfant terrible' of Japanese art, Chim↑Pom are best known for their fearlessly controversial subject matter; recent projects include an exhibition within the radiation-zone of the Fukushima nuclear plant which caused catastrophic damage in March 2011.
Co-exhibiting with Chim↑Pom are Masaya Chiba, Yui Yaegashi, Ryohei Usui, Hidemi Nishida and collective hyslom. The show’s independent curator, Ellen Mara de Wachter, is keen to promote the most current developments in Japanese contemporary art. Rather than attempt a narrow view of aesthetic ‘Japaneseness’, the show celebrates diversity and paradox in a nation which remains stereotypically elusive, but which – particularly given the 2020 Olympics – may once again be on the cusp of major innovation.