Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial

Since its inception, ETAT has been designed around the close-knit relationship between humankind and nature, and its art installations are chosen and curated to effectively contribute to this narrative.

[7] However, the very nature of Echigo Tsumari as an experiential site founded in nascent human-nature relationships also creates a tension, and at times contrast, with this strictly economic model of success.

"[8] Scholarship has framed ETAT as an environmentally-conscious counterpoint to the consumer culture that has gripped Japan and the world at large, remarking on the uniquely rural positioning of the Triennale.

[9] Scholar Brad Monsma writes that the location yields a thematic departure from the “festivals in Japan and elsewhere that are urban and centralized, linking art with international commercial development.” In contrast, he writes, “Echigo-Tsumari is rural, scattered throughout 750 square kilometres, and insistent upon the local and what cannot be commodified.”[10] In addition to its departure from traditional conceptions of consumer culture, ETAT has garnered praise for its drift away the potentially homogenizing, urban-centric effects of globalism on the art scene.

For example, in the early days of the Triennale, art historian Reiko Tomii highlighted the innovative use of site-specific installations to invite the local community to collaborate with international artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang.

[11] Similarly, Susanne Klien writes that Echigo-Tsumari “constitutes a new type of revitalization with its emphasis on human exchange and interaction of heterogeneous players in a rural setting.”[12] At the same time, there are potential pitfalls to the model that ETAT uses to promote the local region.

[13] More specifically, Thekla Boven has researched the repurposing of 11 defunct elementary schools in the Tokamachi region as art installation/exhibition spaces, positing that, despite the positive intentions of these interventions, in some cases the constant repurposing of abandoned buildings for use by the festival may not be the most effective use of these edifices in their local context;[14] that is to say, what would be most useful for the local community on both an economic, social, and holistic level.