Pedro Costa Innervisions

On this occasion, to mark the 30th anniversary of the grand opening of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, we will be holding the exhibition Pedro Costa Innervisions. Representing Portugal, filmmaker Pedro Costa (1958–) has been highly acclaimed internationally not only for his cinema, but also for exhibitions such as Company, held in 2018 at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, and The Song of Pedro Costa, which from 2022 to 2023 toured various regions of Spain.

The title of this exhibit commemorates the album Innervisions (1973) by Stevie Wonder, whom Costa encountered in his teens and would become a great inspiration for him. The spirit of this album, which approaches the relationships between societies and individuals with music, deeply resonated with Costa’s praxis of cinema.

Theatrically released in Japan in 2004, In Vanda’s Room records the harsh everyday of a woman who, having migrated from the former Portuguese colony Cape Verde, lives in the Fontainhas quarter of the slums of Lisbon. Such films by Pedro Costa strongly contrast darkness and light in tranquil, yet meticulous compositions within which fragments of reality are salvaged and social structure keenly dissected, displaying new points of view.

This exhibit introduces cinematic works related to characters like Ventura, who take on vital roles in Costa’s oeuvre, and the places they live, in addition to the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum’s collection. Touching upon Costa’s cinematic expressions and their sociohistorical contexts, we arrived upon Innervisions as title and central motif.

Moreover, throughout the exhibit, in the Art Museum’s first floor hall, Carte Blanche, a series of films selected by Costa himself, will screen alongside a special program of Costa’s own renown works. It would be our great joy if this provides a valuable opportunity to experience from a new angle the power of film and the depth of Pedro Costa’s cinematic world.

In conclusion, as we open this exhibit, we would like to express our profound gratitude for the enormous gift of cooperation from Pedro Costa, as well as for the services of all who made this exhibit possible.

Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1958. He studied history and literature at the University of Lisbon, and later trained in film under the poet and filmmaker António Reis. His feature debut O Sangue (Blood, 1989) garnered attention at the Venice International Film Festival, and he went on to establish an international reputation with works such as Ossos (Bones, 1997) and In Vanda’s Room (2000).

Costa has received numerous awards, including honors from the Cannes Film Festival and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. He won Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival for Horse Money (2014), and the Golden Leopard, the festival’s top prize, for Vitalina Varela (2019).

His most recent film, the short musical The Daughters of Fire (2023)—inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters—was screened as a Special Selection at the 76th Cannes Film Festival and has received widespread acclaim internationally.

Organisers
Curated by Hiroko Tasaka (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum) / Curatorial Cooperation: Haruka Hama (Cinematrix) / Organized by Tokyo Photographic Art Museum operated by Tokyo Metropolitan / Supported by the Embassy of Portugal in Japan, the Camões - Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, I.P. (CICL) and J–WAVE 81.3 FM.

More details here.

For press
If you have any press enquiries about this exhibition, please contact our Department of Public Relations—press-info [at] topmuseum.jp.