About – NIO-PROJECT

Jikke-van-Loon-Workshop-Yokota-Tachibana-san

Issho-ni/ Tomo-ni, (re) creating Pure wisdom, Together!

In 2018 and 2019, the two temple guards were “re-created” by hundreds of participants in the Netherlands and Japan. Each participant painted a Delft blue tile that together formed four man-sized tableaus. On 23 November 2019, these tableaus were festively unveiled and welcomed by the community in Yokota. The temple guards were back and able to resume their duties. Issho-ni / Tomo-ni was a community-art project: a collaborative project with debates, workshops and tours that addressed various themes such as: authenticity, ownership, relocation of the sculptures from their original context to the white-cube in the Rijksmuseum. The aim was to make us aware of and to create insight into different frames of thinking, realities and ‘systems’ by which we act and feel – in order to create understanding, to widen our scope.

The Niōzo were re-created in four life-size, 2.25 metres-high Delft Blue tile tableaux. Each of the 540 tiles had been hand painted by people in the Netherlands and Japan. The two temple guardians were not only literally brought back to Yokota, but by ‘doing, together’ it generated optimal involvement with ‘Niō-ness’
The Delft Blue Niozo, 540 Delftware tiles, 225 x 135 cm each side.

Jikke-van-Loon-Tile-coordination-Yokota-

Jikke-van-Loon-Issho-ni-Delft-blue-Tiles-Firing

Project NIOMON

A NIOMON is a gate at the entrance to a Japanese temple area and houses two Japanese temple guards (Nio-zo): the Agyo-zo and UNgyo-zo. The sounds ‘A’ en ‘UN’ they represent are the first and last syllables of the Siddham script and together they represent all possible sounds and thus symbolise all knowledge, wisdom and compassion. Whoever walks through the gate and passes these guardians gains access to this wisdom.

PROJECT NIO-MON is a follow up on an art project called Issho-ni/ Tomo-ni, and is initiated by Dutch artist Jikke van Loon.
In 2015 she travelled to the former home town of two magnificant Japanese Temple Guardians, nowadays living in the National Museum of Amsterdam*. She went to say thank you to their former gate and home, the Niomon, that belonged to the Iwayaji area in Okuizumo cho, Shimane. This ‘Thank You’ resulted in a wider international art project of bringing home these Temple Guardians to their home town.
Although the Temple Guardians returned home it was impossible to place them in their former house, Iwaya-ji’s Niōmon. The gate is in a terrible condition and needs repair/ rebuilding.
As a result, the inhabitants are still unable to walk ’the field of wisdom’ and the temple guardians were not given the opportunity to regain their specific functionality: giving acces to and being guardians of the field of wisdom.
A foundation in both Japan and the Netherlands has been established to enable the creation of a gate, in both physical and non physical way, a Home for the returned Blue Temple Guardians.

*) In 2007 the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, acquired two magnificent statues: 14th century wooden Japanese temple guardians that, for more than 700 years, stood in the temple gate (Niōmom) of the Iwaya-ji, a then prominent Buddhist temple in Shimane ken, Japan.

WHAT’S IN A NAMEWithin this project, three notions of MON (Gate-ness) play a combined role: gate (temple gate), platform and portal are an attempt to simultaneously designate one and the same entity in three different manifestations. We want to focus on the creation of these ‘MON’ and examine how functionality can be returned to the temple guardians. Again in coöperation with various institutes and participants in the Netherlands and Japan and the inhabitants of Yokota. We will focus on the notion of “gate-ness”, using the original house of the two temple guards as a starting point to engage in workshops, Artist-in-Residence (AIR), exchanges and debates.

NIO refers to
1.) a ‘new’ (nio)- gate(mon)
2.) the house (niomon) of the new temple guards (Niōzo)