Shimabuku's survey exhibition Octopus, Human, Citrus at Centro Botín explores interspecies communication

Shimabuku, an artist born in Kobe, Japan, and now living in Okinawa, presented a survey exhibition titled Octopus, Human, Citrus at the Centro Botín in Santander, Spain, from autumn 2024 to spring 2025. The exhibition featured works like Something that Floats / Something that Sinks (2024), with limes bobbing in fishtanks, and Going to meet the Octopuses in Santander (2024), a new version of his 2003 piece Catching Octopus with self-made ceramic pots. His art, spanning installations, videos, and texts, often emerges from travels and focuses on communication between species and cultures, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Shimabuku's practice includes works such as Fish & Chips (2006), shown at the Liverpool Biennial in 2006, and The Snow Monkeys of Texas (2016), which documents snow monkeys in the U.S. He emphasizes using his own texts to provide direct access to his thoughts, avoiding conventional explanatory wall labels. The artist compares his working method to that of a chef, improvising based on available ingredients. His work will be included in the Okayama Art Summit 2025, running from 26 September to 24 November. The interview was published in the Summer 2025 issue of ArtReview Asia.