BUG is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Japan and Berlin based artist hayate kobayashi. The title of this exhibition, “polyparole,” is a word coined by kobayashi, combining “poly-,” meaning “multiple,” and “parole,” which in linguistics means “an act of speech performed by an individual in a specific situation.” 

In 2020, kobayashi received a scholarship from the Ezoe Memorial Recruit Foundation to study at the Berlin University of the Arts. However, the pandemic of COVID-19 infection that occurred at the same time as his study abroad deepened racial divisions and conflicts. kobayashi was temporarily unable to return to his home country, and experienced a state of exophony (German for “state of being outside the mother tongue”) in an unknown land, which led him to think about the “stranger.” 

One of the works in the exhibition, “Space-in-translation,” was created in response to a conversation with a poet from China’s Sichuan Province who defected to Berlin. The poet describes his exile as “I ran(我跑了).” kobayashi uses these words as words that resonate with different contexts and attempts to stitch the “strangers” together. 

In this exhibition, we hear the murmur of several people, based on the keywords that have interested kobayashi in recent years: “exophony,” “immigrant,” and “queerness.” kobayashi, who was exposed to the murmur of people with various backgrounds in Berlin, conveys a simple yet powerful message, “The personal is political,” through apparatuses, video, multilingual poetry, and podcasts.