Alive IV exhibited at Earth Festa Kanagawa 2025

As of January 2025, over 284,889 people with foreign backgrounds live in Kanagawa Prefecture, including many whose families have lived here for generations.

This exhibition of Alive IV at Earth Festa Kanagawa grew from a desire to focus on these individuals and share their history and present-day lives.

In discussions about how people from different backgrounds live together, we hope audiences learned about those who have already been living together here and learn about their struggles, sorrows, dreams, and hopes. People from different roots already share communities across Kanagawa. When they listen and show respect for each other's history and culture, they can build trust and live together more peacefully, which in turn creates hope for future generations.

We hope to build together the society of tomorrow, while listening to each other’s stories and experiences.

Photographer Kim Hak's Alive IV shares the personal stories of people who survived Cambodia's harsh era and immigrated to Japan. The photographs convey what people endured during that time, the pain that continues to this day, and their hope and strength. These stories enrich a society where people with different backgrounds and experiences live together. On the 30th, guides who were also subjects of the works held an “Interactive Appreciation Tour,” engaging in dialogue with participants to deepen their understanding of the pieces together.

The exhibition paired "Alive IV" with “삶(Sam) ~ The Paths Walked by Halmonis ~” expressing the lives and bittersweet experiences of halmonis (grandmothers) from the Korean Peninsula through letters and drawings learned in literacy classes. What future do these grandmothers, who have lived over half their lives in Kanagawa Prefecture and say “Japan is also my homeland,” dream of?