For years, travelers have depended on well-thumbed guidebooks filled with recommendations for landmarks, local dining, and cultural etiquette. However, this year’s Art Week Tokyo (AWT) is turning that conventional wisdom on its head.
Art Meets Geography
The AWT Video program, titled Your Travel Guide To…, features a distinctive lineup of single-channel moving image works that probe what is presented in travel narratives versus what remains unseen.
X Zhu-Nowell, the sector curator and executive director of Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum, expresses a deeper interest in travel guides not just as written works, but as tools that influence how we navigate through varied spaces. “They choreograph bodies within inhabited spaces and reflect idealized landscapes,” Zhu-Nowell explains.
Diverse Voices in Video
This year's showcase includes ten artists, with five from Japan and one representing the Japanese diaspora. Zhu-Nowell has collaborated with several of these artists before, including Berlin-based Kandis Williams, who is debuting her work in Japan through this exhibition. “Bringing their art into this context alongside new companions is significant,” she states.
One highlight is Williams’s piece, A Travel Guide: Black Gothic in South Korean Horror (2025), which draws inspiration from Victor Hugo Green’s The Green Book. This guide was designed to help Black travelers in America during the Jim Crow era find safe spaces to dine and sleep. Zhu-Nowell describes Williams's work as exploring the relationship between mobility and power, noting how it connects the historical experiences of Black Americans with contemporary themes of militarization and state violence in Korea.
Technology in Focus
Another standout in the lineup is Ken Okiishi's Brian at Home (2020-25), featuring engaging Zoom conversations with his personal trainer. This video invites viewers into a highly automated apartment in New York City, a place described as a “smart-home hellscape.” Okiishi’s exploration of this carefully designed living space reveals how the ideal of seamless inclusion often falls short.
The exhibition presents a mix of perspectives, including works from He Xiangyu, Linda Iha, Fuyuhiko Takata, and the late Keiichi Tanaami and Hiroyuki Oki, both renowned creators of handcrafted video art. Zhu-Nowell emphasizes that travel guides carry complex narratives, often lacking neutrality and offering limited representations of culture and geography.
A Reflection on Past and Present
Reflecting on the historical context of travel guides, Zhu-Nowell points to the 18th-century ars apodemica, which instructed privileged young European men on how to interact with cultures abroad. In contrast, Zhu-Nowell draws parallels to contemporary guidebooks popular in the late 20th century, as well as the new wave of digital, influencer-driven travel content designed for a more transient lifestyle. “Travel guides are inherently unbalanced,” she asserts, echoing philosopher Katherine McKittrick’s assertion that geography is never a neutral domain.
Art Week Tokyo’s video program invites visitors to reconsider how they think about travel and representation. By challenging the narratives typically presented in travel literature, it opens up a dialogue about the deeper meanings and histories that influence how we understand place.
The AWT Video program runs from November 4 to November 8 at the SMBC East Tower Earth Garden in Chiyoda-ku, showcasing works that provoke thought about the art of travel.
Tag: Trip Guides