Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art

Modern Twist explores the evocative, sensual, and sculptural power of contemporary bamboo art. Bamboo is a quintessential part of Japanese culture, shaping the country’s social, artistic, and spiritual landscape. Although bamboo is an abundant natural resource, it is a challenging artistic medium with fewer than 100 professional bamboo artists in Japan today. Mastering the art form requires decades of meticulous practice while learning how to harvest, split, and plait the bamboo. Modern Twist features 17 of these artists and 38 of their innovative and imaginatively crafted sculptures. Two of the artists have been named Living National Treasures by the Japanese government: Katsushiro Soho and Fujinamu Noboru.

Modern Twist celebrates artists who have helped to redefine a traditional craft as a modern genre, inventing unexpected new forms and pushing the medium to new levels of conceptual, technical, and artistic ingenuity.