Augmenting Small-Island Heritage through Site-Specific Art: A View from Naoshima

In an effort to draw tourists and revitalize communities, a growing number of peripheral islands in Japan have utilized contemporary art to augment local traditions and heritage forms. Such “site-specific” artwork recontextualizes these forms for an outside, typically affluent gaze. The purported benefit for communities is an influx of fresh faces and new tourist revenue streams. However, the presence of contemporary art in rural or peripheral contexts can have an alienating effect, particularly if it is developed with some level of input from community members only for that engagement to cease when the work is complete, the resulting (static) product intended purely for tourist consumption. In this ethnographic study, which examines the well-known “art island” of Naoshima, various forms of artwork are discussed in relation to their socio-cultural settings, with a hyper-controlled and development-focused institutional regime proving disadvantageous to sustainable social outcomes. The study culminates in an action-research derived set of findings that uncover new, more socially relevant forms of artistic creation on the island, which illustrate the challenge up until now while also suggesting a positive path forward.