Performance, making, place, and everyday life.

Shinichi and Emi each pursue their own artistic practices while also working together as usaginingen, a family collective of three.

Shinichi begins with a sense that something about an object or situation is not quite right as it is. He may make something needed for everyday life, or transform an existing system or place. Emi begins with an image that comes to mind, or simply the desire to make something. Rather than deciding on a final form in advance, she works by arranging and combining drawings, materials, and shapes. When they collaborate, they bring together their different perspectives and methods, continuing to work until both are satisfied.

Something made for everyday life may later become an artwork, just as a method developed through artistic practice may find its way back into daily life. A camera installed to watch over a rice field was already doing its job long before it was presented as an artwork in a museum.

For us, calling something an artwork marks neither its beginning nor its end.

usaginingen is made up of three family members: Hirai Shinichi, Hirai Emi, and Hirai Minagi. They carry out different practices, from live performance to painting, sculpture, ceramics, and running their own spaces, all within the same shared life.

In their live performances, they use handmade video machines and instruments, combining video, live playing, light and shadow, and the movement of machines in real time. They moved to Germany in 2010 and began working in Berlin in 2011. They have performed in 30 countries. In 2014 they won the grand prize at the Reykjavik Visual Music Festival. In 2021 they toured 38 venues across Japan with support from the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ AFF program, and were featured in an Apple Japan ad the same year. In 2026 they held their first museum exhibition at the Takamatsu City Museum of Art.

They have been based on Teshima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea in Kagawa, since 2016. They converted a warehouse themselves into a venue called Toyoshima usaginingen Theater, where they continue to perform. They also cleared unused land to build a park and fields, and made playground equipment out of bamboo and driftwood.

They now run ShinAiKan, a former infant welfare facility, hosting residencies for artists from Japan and abroad, along with community meals, film screenings, and workshops. They call the old house next to the theater usaginingen Kunsthaus, using it as they continue to work on the building itself.