DOXYGEN: In Praise of Shadows with Moemi Yamamoto

DOXYGEN is a series of lectures, workshops, discussions, and creative studios focused on contemporary art and current phenomena for young audiences.

Japanese painter Moemi Yamamoto, who studied visual arts in Japan and recently graduated from Prague's Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), lectures on the theme of Japanese aesthetics of darkness inspired by the exhibition GA-I-SU-RA and the interweaving of Eastern and Western culture. She draws from Tanizaki's essay, which describes pre-modern Japanese aesthetics as a search for beauty in darkness—in the color of a bowl appearing as an accumulation of shadow, in a woman's face emerging from surrounding gloom, or in the subtle shadows of a tokonoma alcove. Through her painting practice, Yamamoto discusses this aesthetic, the "perspective" gained from her time in the Czech Republic, and the common ground between Czech and Japanese painting.

Before the lecture, there will be a guided tour of the GA-I-SU-RA exhibition, which presents the lifetime work of Czech Japanologist, translator, journalist, calligrapher, photographer, and educator Petr Geisler (1949–2009).

The programme is intended for young people aged 16 to 30 and lasts approximately 2.5 hours (guided tour, lecture, and break). The DOXYGEN programme is curated by Martina Čapková, Martin Černík, Anna Knězová, and Monika Smiešková.