On the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale & Related Thoughts About Art in China
- Gloria Gong
- Aug 24
- 3 min read
Walking out of Niigata Airport, I felt a sense of tranquility and calm. There weren’t many people. Niigata was nothing like the rest of Japan. Bustling. Orderly. Interactions filled with restraint, precision, and politeness—yet beneath the courtesy there was little warmth.
Maybe it was the utopian image from Snow Country. Yasunari had definitely planted a Shangri-La in my head, and after seeing it in person, it was nothing but the truth. Even though it is summer now, I can still feel the magical romanticism left over from last winter. Niigata is known for its snowy winters and rice cultivation. Rice fields are everywhere, painting the villages in all shades of green: chartreuse, emerald, jade, olive. The sky was particularly blue. Water flowed through the villages, nourishing every inch of farmland.
Echigo-Tsumari refers to a region in old Echigo Province. The name itself invites visitors to imagine the stories and people who have lived on this land for centuries. During the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, the entire region becomes a vast museum. Around every corner of the village, you are guaranteed to encounter an artwork. Every installation resonates with the philosophy that art is not an intrusion but an echo of the land. Here, architecture, rice terraces, forests, and abandoned villages all become stages for creative communion and rediscovery.
The most striking site for me is undoubtedly the Museum on Echigo-Tsumari (MonET). Artists from around the world created pieces that reflect their emotions about this land. Walking into the museum, I was engulfed by Akinori Matsumoto’s wooden and bamboo constructions that move and sing with the wind. When air passes through them, they chime and breathe, creating melodies that intertwine with Aiko Yamamoto’s flowing fabric.
Driving down to the west side of the region, the Matsudai NOHBUTAI Field Museum comes into view, its bold geometric architecture rising against a backdrop of terraced rice fields and green mountains. I’ve never seen an exhibition as interactive as this one. It felt almost like an art-themed amusement park. Nearly every piece invites visitors to participate in some way. This interplay between art and agriculture treats the rural landscape not as background but as part of the exhibition itself. That is what’s magical about Echigo-Tsumari: it is less a container for objects and more a living stage where everyday life and creative practice continually overlap.
Museums and art festivals should never be just venues. This is where China is lacking. From what I’ve seen, Chinese museums often serve merely as props for visitors to take photos or “check in/打卡” for social media. When I visited MAP, only a few people were actually admiring the art; most of the audience looked at the paintings through their tiny digital screens. If that’s the case, why not just Google the paintings from home? No wonder museums are going out of business. Even the largest institutions are beginning to bleed out.
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale even includes artworks that serve as places to stay—such as James Turrell’s House of Light, Ubusuna House, Australia House, and my personal favorite, Marina Abramović’s Dream House. Guests can spend the night, while during the day visitors can enter and admire the space. Not everyone can afford this, of course. But those who can often fly across the world for the experience. Some return many times, since there are simply too many works to see in a single trip. In this way, art fuels not only restaurants and hotels but the broader local economy. Ultimately, art becomes the destination itself. Visitors don’t just come and go; they want to stay, linger, return.
On our last day, we visited The Last Class. The old school building was strewn with hay, worn benches, and quietly spinning fans. Going deeper into the installation, there was a loud noise from the spinning fan, accompanied by a flickering bright light coming from the other side of the hallway. It felt almost as if one were walking toward heaven. Slowly climbing up to the second floor, we were met with the sharp thumping sound of heartbeat pulses: a vivid testament to lives once lived. The artist gives this abandoned school new life while enveloping visitors in a living memory. This makes me wonder if China will ever achieve such greatness.
What Echigo-Tsumari proves is that art is not only about exhibitions, but about transforming a place and giving it a second life. The Triennale shows how abandoned schools, empty houses, and quiet fields can be reborn through creativity, becoming both a memory of the past and a promise for the future. Echigo-Tsumari is not just a festival, it is a vision of what art can do for humanity. It binds people to their land, it turns silence into song, and it ensures that even the most remote valleys can still flourish.
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