Inujima Island   犬島

Inujma in Japanese means "Dog Island", so named because of its resemblance to a sitting dog. It is so small that you can walk around the whole island on foot.

Located near the northern coast of the inland sea and Okayama , it is the smallest and most picturesque of the three islands devoted to the art of the Sea of Seto.

The principle is the same as that followed on Naoshima : integrate art in the environment of this Japanese island.

A refined Past

Similar to Teshima, the ancient inhabitants of Inujima lived for a very long time off the extraction and production of granite stone, which was used to decorate the palaces of Kyoto or Tokyo.

In 1909, industrials in the region tried to implant a copper refinery, but this was unsuccessful due to the copper price decline a decade later.

The peculiarity of the Art Museum in Inujima is that, unlike the Chichu Museum or the Teshima Art Museum, it was not built, but instead set in the ruins with blackened walls of this old refinery.

Recycling

Hiroshi Sambuichi, the man at the origin of this reorganization of the ruins, would build Seirensho Art Museum, a museum in cohesion with nature and the elements, without heating or air conditioning. The creation of this one is a symbolic way to recycle the industrial past of the island.

The place is divided into four areas. In each of them, the artist Yukinori Yanagi chose a force of nature to highlight: the sun's heat in the Sun Gallery and its power in the Energy Hall; the freshness of the earth in the Earth Gallery and the wind in the Chimney Hall.

In the Empty House

In the village, five unoccupied houses were invested in by the Inujima Art House Project. All buildings were revisited by different artists such as Haruka Kojin, a Japanese artist working mainly with glass and the optical effects it produces. He is at the origin of the S-Art House and Art A-House.