Go for Kogei
Ethnography of the Body and Material – Slowness and Depth in an Accelerated Society Ten Japanese Artists on Slowness and the Act of Making 
Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina
May 09 – November 22, 2026

NPO Syuto Kanazawa presents Ethnography of the Body and Material – Slowness and Depth in an Accelerated Society, a major exhibition that brings together ten Japanese artists with material-driven, craft-based approaches. On view from May 9 to November 22, 2026 at Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina, concurrent to the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the exhibition is curated by Yuji Akimoto, former artistic director of Benesse Art Site Naoshima and artistic director of Go for Kogei, a project dedicated to promoting new perspectives on craft from Hokuriku, a region with a long history of craftsmanship. 

Rather than positioning craft as a discrete genre, the exhibition deliberately adopts a craft-based approach as a critical lens through which contemporary art itself can be reread and reinterpreted. The exhibition presents a renewed understanding of contemporary art grounded in deep engagement with materiality, embodied forms of knowledge, and the gradual accumulation of gestures over time. Through the artists’ diverse practices, the exhibition offers a quiet yet resolute inquiry into dominant value systems that prioritize speed, visibility, and immediate circulation. 

Ethnography of the Body and Material – Slowness and Depth in an Accelerated Society examines how the act of “making” can restore a different sense of time and physical perception within an increasingly accelerated society. Working with materials including clay, glass, fiber, lacquer, earth, water, fire, and the body itself, the ten featured artists foreground slowness, repetition, and manual labor as essential modes of knowledge and experience. 

In this exhibition, “ethnography” refers to a fieldwork-based approach that interprets the entire practice within its cultural context, including examining how artists use their hands, how materials transform their production environment, as well as the viewers’ senses. The exhibition approaches each work as a form of “sensory fieldwork” situated between the body and the material, process and perception. These works emerge through sustained attention and tactile awareness, encouraging viewers to spend time with subtle transformations, layered surfaces, and accumulated gestures. 

Ethnography of the Body and Material centers ways of working that unfold over extended durations and resist the demand for immediacy. Each participating artist engages with materials that impose their own temporal logic. Clay must dry and crack. Lacquer demands repeated application and long periods of curing. Glass cools at its own pace. Thread responds to tension, gravity, and accumulated touch. In yielding to these rhythms, the artists produce works that embody layered time rather than fixed images. 

Curator Yuji Akimoto says: “The world we live in is marked by a focus on immediacy and efficiency. It prizes ‘easy-to-understand’ and ‘ready-to-use’ qualities, while increasingly neglecting the ‘slow pace’ and ‘silence’ that nurture the depth of our senses and memories. Ethnography of the Body and Material considers the creation and appreciation process itself as a form of quiet resistance to challenge an accelerated society. It is an effort to reconstruct our senses and reconnect with the world. This micro-ethnography, woven at the intersection of body and material, excavates forgotten strata of sensitivity and reveals new meanings of ‘making’ in the modern age.”

Set within the historic Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina, the exhibition engages directly with the building’s layered architectural history, characterized by high ceilings, thick walls, shifting natural light, and surfaces marked by centuries of use and restoration. Rather than transforming the palazzo into a neutral display environment, the exhibition embraces its accumulated “time of architecture” as an integral element of the viewing experience. Led by architect Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture, the exhibition design introduces a temporary scaffolding structure that encourages visitors to move through the space from multiple perspectives. This three-dimensional pathway dissolves linear viewing routes and modes of viewing, reconfiguring the relationships between architecture, artwork, and the body, redefining space as an apparatus for experiencing time. 

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