Rintaro Hara+Yu Hara | Works

Dreams of Babylonian Towers

• Dreams of Babylonian Towers
• Year: 2025
• ART MUSEUM & LIBRARY, OTA, Gunma, Japan

The exhibition inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, in which the ART MUSEUM & LIBRARY, OTA itself was conceived as a contemporary Tower of Babel. On the first floor, titled “Floating Dream,” Rintaro Hara presented “Ascending and Descending_Ota,” an installation in which polystyrene spheres drift through midair, alongside works from Yu Hara’s “Flying Classroom” series. The second floor, “Mrages in the Night,” featured four monumental lanterns rotating at low speed. Images based on a man’s life, a woman’s life, animals, and weather overlapped as shifting shadow projections, expanding and contracting in scale as they transformed the space. The song “Fuwafuwa na Babel.” by the poetry-and-music unit popi/jectve (Sato Yuupopic and So Sasatani) resonated throughout the venue, reinforcing its dreamlike atmosphere. On the third floor, “Garden of Logos,” approximately 400 wooden blocks inscribed with words invited visitors to compose their own surreal sentences. Works created in a workshop with fifth-grade students from Ota Chuo Elementary School, under the theme of “guardian for the Art Museum & Library, Ota,” were installed along the spiral ramp wall, adding layered perspectives to the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, visitors engaged with the works through bodily actions—walking, climbing, and lying down—transforming the act of viewing into a physical and immersive experience.
Photo: Kenichi Okayasu
Courtesy of ART MUSEUM & LIBRARY, OTA