Hankyu Railway turns a Kyoto underpass into a student art show for the fourth year running
Hankyu Railway is staging a fourth edition of its student art exhibition in a Kyoto pedestrian underpass, a small but telling example of a landlord using its own infrastructure to shape foot traffic into the retail corridor it anchors nearby.
Hankyu Railway said it will hold the fourth edition of "Art Under the Shijo," a student art exhibition in the Shijo-dori pedestrian underpass in Kyoto, from November 4 to December 20, covering about 72 metres of the underpass between exits 12 and 13.
Six student groups from three Kyoto schools -- a Kyoto art and craft university (京都美術工芸大学), Kyoto Women's University (京都女子大学) and Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts (同志社女子大学) -- were selected through a presentation review to install work under the theme "a comfortable space," Hankyu Railway said. The event is organised with the Shijo Hanei-kai shopping-street association and Kyoto City, and sponsored by Kyoto Shinkin Bank and Daiwa Lease.
A railway operator does not usually commission student art for a tunnel wall; Hankyu runs this one jointly with the local shopping-street association because the underpass sits on the walking route into the Kawaramachi-Shijo retail corridor its own stores and tenants depend on, and a fourth straight year suggests the railway sees enough value in that foot traffic to keep paying for it.