The New Day project began when Kaikai Kiki’s art fair GEISAI#15 was postponed due to the Tohoku-Pacific earthquake. Moved by the state of the disaster and filled with a desire to provide encouragement to those affected, we began asking artists to instill their messages of hope into works and upload them to the Twitter hashtag #newday_GEISAI. Soon after, a New Day charity event was organized at Kaikai Kiki Gallery Taipei, with artists’ submissions printed out on A4 paper and displayed on the walls of the gallery. The event took place from Friday March 25 to Sunday March 27.

As part of the event’s fund raising efforts, Takashi Murakami produced a set of special New Day posters (ED300, signed), all of which sold on opening day. We remain grateful to the people of Taiwan for their support. There were also special charity t-shirts sold by the event’s organizer, newspaper Apple Daily. With special promotional help from Jolin Tsai, the Chinese speaking world’s top pop idol, the project received a flood of attention across the global media.

Here we see staff frantically printing out the hundreds of submitted works. Installation lasted well into the morning.

A wall of works gathered from all across Japan.

We opened up a special corner of the gallery for visitors to create their own works. One by one, these normally shy Taiwanese artists shared their thoughts with all.

Live painting from local Taiwanese artists! Our quiet gallery has never felt so alive.

Even small children got in on the act. The Taiwanese certainly love pop colors!

And here’s Kaikai Kiki Installation Chief Jun Tagawa showing his skills. The sketch on the bottom is of Atsushi Saga, who provides assistants to our Miyoshi studio, and on top is Geisai Executive Committee Leader Takumi Kaseno. The likeness is uncanny!

The number of works multiplied as the event went on. In the end, we had 549 individual paintings and drawings on display. Thank you to everyone for your cooperation.

Chinatsu Ban and Keiko Moritsugu made the trip from Japan for the event and entertained audiences with live painting performances. The paintings were scheduled for three days, but they ended up working until just before their flights. These two large works were each 2 meters tall and 8 meters in length.

Here we see Ban throwing out her paper palette and resorting to using pages from old magazines. She began the work anew several times, adding new layers on each pass.

Keiko Moritsugu’s work evolved as she communicated with the gallery guests. Below you can see the finished drawing.

title：Inochi no Chikara

title：pray for♡

Despite the rushed scheduling, the event was a great success thanks to everyone’s cooperation. The New Day Project will only grow from here, taking on new forms along the way. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on the New Day website and these report pages.

Photo by Hideyuki Motegi