Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residency Proposal

Concise thesis: This essay argues that Amiel Roldan’s photographic series—rooted in process, material contradiction, and perceptual ambiguity—offers a site-specific, dialogic framework ideally suited to the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residency, enabling public engagement, cross-cultural exchange, and a focused exhibition project that responds to FAAM’s mission of fostering Asian contemporary art networks.

Concept and Premises

Amiel Roldan’s practice centers on material dissonance and the poetics of everyday rupture: soft domestic objects confronting urban detritus, painterly gestures captured as photographic tableaux, and staged optical illusions that interrogate perspective. These premises—contradiction, process, and perceptual slippage—form a coherent conceptual spine for a residency project that both produces new work and activates local communities through workshops and site-responsive interventions. FAAM’s residency explicitly seeks artists who will create and present work in Fukuoka while engaging local audiences and networks; Roldan’s socially legible yet formally rigorous images can be translated into public programs and exhibitions that align with these aims.

Proposed Residency Project

Title: Thresholds of Use: Objects, Surfaces, and the Urban Interior

1. Research Phase (Weeks 1–2): Document Fukuoka’s liminal spaces—markets, riverbanks, and domestic thresholds—through photographic walks and conversations with local craftspeople. This phase foregrounds contextual listening and yields source material for studio work. 

2. Studio Production (Weeks 3–8): Translate field material into staged photographic installations that combine painted surfaces, found textiles, and sculptural props—echoing Roldan’s interest in painterly mark-making and object-plant juxtapositions. Key outcome: a series of large-format prints and an installation that collapses studio process into exhibition form. 

3. Public Engagement (Throughout): Host open-studio days, a collaborative workshop on “making with found materials,” and a small public talk linking the work to FAAM’s mission of cross-cultural exchange.

Critical Rationale

Roldan’s work operates at the intersection of documentary attention and constructed mise-en-scène, producing images that are both indexical and performative. This duality allows the residency to function as research and exhibition simultaneously: photographs become documents of place while installations stage the conditions of perception. The project’s emphasis on process-as-exhibit resonates with contemporary museum practices that privilege relational encounters and artist-led programming, making it a strong fit for FAAM’s residency objectives.

Exhibition and Legacy

The final presentation would pair the photographic series with a reconstructed studio fragment—painted panels, a step-stool, and domestic objects—inviting viewers to read the work as both artifact and action. Accompanying programming (catalog essay, workshop documentation, and a public conversation) ensures sustained institutional impact and creates archival material for FAAM’s research resources.

Risks and Mitigations

- Risk: Cultural misreading of site-specific gestures. Mitigation: Early-stage community consultations and collaboration with local curators. 
- Risk: Logistical constraints for large-format production. Mitigation: Prioritize modular works and local fabrication partners.

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Conclusion: By foregrounding process, material contradiction, and participatory modes, Amiel Roldan’s proposed residency project offers FAAM a rigorous, community-engaged exhibition that amplifies the museum’s role as an Asian contemporary art hub and leaves a durable programmatic and archival legacy.

Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (FAAM) invites local and international artists, including but not limited to those from Asian regions, for a certain period, to provide them with opportunities to create and present their artworks in Fukuoka, so that they encourage and inspire each other to achieve their full potential globally from Fukuoka city. Through conducting various artistic exchange programs with local citizens, it hopes to nurture a deeper understanding of Asian contemporary art and cultures and to foster a diverse range of local cultures. Furthermore, FAAM aims to become an interactive platform for Asian art, through efforts such as building an international human and organizational network.


Thesis

This proposal argues that Amiel Roldan’s practice—rooted in material contradiction, processual visibility, and perceptual slippage—should be realized at the Fukuoka Art Museum Residency through the production of tangible, site-responsive artworks rather than photographic documentation. The residency will prioritize the making of objects, painted surfaces, sculptural assemblages, and immersive installations that embody Roldan’s conceptual premises: the collision of domestic softness and urban grit, painterly gesture as spatial architecture, and perspectival illusions that reconfigure everyday thresholds. By centering fabrication, material experimentation, and public activation, the project will produce a durable body of work that engages FAAM’s institutional mission and leaves a lasting material legacy for local audiences and collections.

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Concept and Premises

Core premises. Roldan’s work consistently stages encounters between contradictory materials and registers: soft textiles against cracked asphalt; painterly surfaces that read as architectural planes; objects that both reveal and conceal their making. These tensions—contradiction, processual exposure, and perceptual ambiguity—are not merely photographic motifs but generative conditions for object-making. The residency reframes these premises as directives for producing physical work: objects that bear traces of labor, surfaces that retain the gestures of their making, and installations that require viewers to negotiate perspective and use.

Why objects, not photographs. Photographs can index Roldan’s concerns, but they risk flattening the tactile and spatial qualities that make the work legible in lived experience. The residency’s aim is to translate photographic source material and studio experiments into three-dimensional artifacts—painted panels, textile-sculptures, modular furniture-objects, and perspectival assemblages—that demand bodily negotiation. These works will function as both evidence of process and as autonomous artworks capable of activating FAAM’s galleries, public spaces, and community programs.

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Material Practice and Making Strategies

Material logic. The project foregrounds materials that carry social and domestic histories: reclaimed textiles, industrial paint, found furniture, concrete fragments, and locally sourced plant matter. Materials will be chosen for their capacity to hold mark-making and to register time—stains, drips, frays, and patinas become legible indexes of use and labor. Key materials and techniques include: layered acrylic and oil washes on large wooden panels; textile stuffing and re-stitching to create hybrid cushions that have been partially weathered; welded and bolted assemblages combining domestic objects with industrial scaffolding; and in-situ concrete casting that captures impressions of soft objects.

Process as artifact. Making processes will be intentionally visible and conserved as part of the work. For example, a painted panel will retain scaffolding marks, masking tape edges, and the scaffold’s footprint; a cushion-sculpture will be partially unstitched and re-sewn, exposing its inner stuffing and the hand-stitched seams. These traces function as material narratives—they document labor, decision, and failure, and they resist the polished neutrality of finished commodity objects.

Scale and modularity. Works will be produced at a scale that negotiates FAAM’s gallery architecture and public corridors. Large painted panels (2–3 meters) will be conceived as modular units that can be reconfigured into wall sequences or freestanding partitions. Smaller sculptural objects—pedestal works, hybrid furniture—will be designed for both gallery display and public activation, allowing the museum to deploy them in educational programs or site-specific interventions.

Local material engagement. A deliberate strategy is to incorporate locally available materials and craft techniques. This includes collaborating with Fukuoka-based woodworkers for panel fabrication, textile artisans for reworking found fabrics, and concrete specialists for in-situ casting. Such collaborations ensure the works are materially anchored in place and support local craft economies.

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Residency Production Plan

Phase 1 — Listening and Sourcing (Weeks 1–2). The residency begins with a focused period of material reconnaissance: visiting markets, repair shops, and domestic interiors to source textiles, furniture fragments, and discarded objects. This phase is not photographic documentation but material procurement—selecting objects for transformation. Conversations with local craftspeople will inform fabrication strategies and identify sustainable material sources.

Phase 2 — Material Experiments and Prototyping (Weeks 3–5). In-studio experiments will test combinations of paint, textile, and structural supports. Prototypes will include: a) a series of painted panels that incorporate embedded textile fragments and cast concrete edges; b) cushion-sculptures that have been partially replaced by plant growth or concrete casts; c) perspectival assemblages that only resolve into a coherent object when viewed from a specific vantage point. Each prototype will be documented through process notes and small-scale maquettes; documentation serves the studio, not the exhibition.

Phase 3 — Fabrication and Assembly (Weeks 6–10). Full-scale production will commence, prioritizing durable construction and museum-grade finishes where appropriate. Works intended for long-term display will be fabricated with conservation in mind: archival adhesives, stabilized textiles, and removable structural supports. Simultaneously, a set of site-responsive interventions—temporary installations in FAAM’s public corridors or adjacent urban thresholds—will be fabricated for short-term activation.

Phase 4 — Installation and Activation (Weeks 11–12). The final two weeks focus on installation, public programming, and documentation. Installations will be configured to emphasize the viewer’s bodily negotiation: low seating that invites touch (with clear signage and supervised access), panels that create narrow thresholds, and perspectival objects that require movement to resolve. Public activation includes an open studio day where visitors can observe fabrication, and a hands-on workshop where participants co-create small objects from reclaimed materials.

Deliverables. The residency will produce: a suite of 8–12 finished artworks (painted panels, sculptural objects, and modular installations); two site-specific interventions; a public workshop series; and a concise conservation and installation dossier for FAAM’s archives.

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Exhibition, Public Activation, and Legacy

Exhibition logic. The final exhibition—titled Thresholds of Use—will present the works as a constellation of objects that map the residency’s material journey. The gallery will be arranged to foreground process: a reconstructed studio fragment (workbench, step-stool, paint-splattered panels) will sit adjacent to finished works, allowing viewers to trace the transformation from raw material to object. Lighting and circulation will be calibrated to reveal surface textures and to choreograph perspectival revelations.

Public programming. Programming will emphasize co-creation and material literacy: workshops on textile repair and re-stitching; a collaborative assembly day where community members contribute to a growing modular sculpture; and a curator-led conversation on materiality and museum practice. These activities position the museum as a site of making, not merely display.

Archival and institutional legacy. Each artwork will be accompanied by a material dossier—a concise technical file that documents materials, fabrication methods, conservation needs, and suggested display protocols. This ensures FAAM can maintain and reuse the works in future exhibitions. The residency will also produce a short printed pamphlet that contextualizes the works for local audiences, emphasizing the material choices and collaborative processes.

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Risks, Conservation, and Ethical Considerations

Risk: Material fragility. Many works intentionally expose fragile elements (unstitched seams, organic matter). Mitigation: Use removable conservation supports, provide clear handling protocols, and limit tactile access to supervised programs.

Risk: Cultural misinterpretation. Site-responsive gestures risk being read as appropriation. Mitigation: Early consultation with local curators and craftspeople; collaborative workshops that foreground exchange rather than extraction.

Risk: Logistical constraints. Large-scale fabrication may exceed studio capacity. Mitigation: Prioritize modularity and local fabrication partners; produce a mix of permanent and temporary works.

Conservation strategy. Each object will be fabricated with a conservation plan: stabilized textiles, reversible adhesives, and documentation of environmental tolerances. For works incorporating organic matter, the plan will specify display durations and replacement protocols to avoid deterioration.

Sustainability and ethics. Material sourcing will prioritize reclaimed and locally available materials to reduce carbon footprint. The project will avoid sourcing endangered materials and will document provenance for all reclaimed objects.

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Conclusion

By insisting on the primacy of actual, materially present artworks, this residency proposal reframes Amiel Roldan’s photographic sensibility as a program of making—objects that retain the traces of labor, that stage contradiction, and that demand bodily negotiation. The Fukuoka Art Museum Residency offers an ideal context to realize this shift: a site where process can be exhibited, where local craft networks can be engaged, and where the museum’s public remit can be activated through workshops and site-specific interventions. The resulting body of work—painted panels, textile-sculptures, perspectival assemblages, and modular installations—will not only articulate Roldan’s conceptual premises in material form but will also leave FAAM with durable artworks, a clear conservation dossier, and a record of collaborative practice that extends beyond the residency itself.

https://faam.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/en/residence/requirement/