Dear All,
“Dear All,” is an ever-growing and itinerant art project, installation, archive, and exhibition created at the uninhibited rhythm of deliberate human connection.
It maps how we give meaning to relationships, places, and time. It is an ongoing letter, a living research, and an ode to human connection. It grows not through repetition, but through transformation, each iteration shaped by new encounters, shifting contexts, and the textures of the place it inhabits. The installations are site-specific every time, sculpted by the experiences I have in a country. The archive, however, remains unbound, ever-expanding and carried across borders and time.
Concept
Out of a desire to stop time, I began stretching moments, memories, encounters, and started carrying them to different places with me. I wanted them to exist outside the bounds of financial systems, legal frameworks, and the rapid pace at which we consume and forget. I want my connection to people to be free from the forces that inevitably shape our relationships, and make myself available for a global exchange of personal expression.
Cassette cases have long served as containers for messages, used as love letters, stand-ins for phone calls, and objects accompanying people in motion. Once mass-produced and practical, they eventually fell out of use. They became nostalgic objects and symbols of slowness, intimacy, and a non-digital, physical presence. The cassette case is a vessel I now reappropriate to carry my past encounters. They offer an alternative to the costly travel or digital fatigue of staying connected across distances.
“Dear All,” is an ever-growing and nomadic art project, archive, and exhibition created at the uninhibited rhythm of deliberate human connection. At its core, it is an investigation led by emotion over theory, acting against the speed and impersonality of digital data gathering. The research intends to understand how we give meaning to relationships and sustain connections with people and places.
Through “Dear All,” I look back and ahead, mapping where I have been, and dreaming of where I might go and who I have yet to meet. It is my guide through a journey of finding out how I want to, or even how I may, exist in this world. What does it mean to form a bond? And what does it mean to keep it alive with or without the presence of the other person?
As someone without a fixed background or place to call home, I seek to understand my place by documenting connections through the exchange of cassette boxes. I hand out empty ones to be returned with memories, artworks, files, instructions, offerings, objects, and gestures inside. What began as a flickering interest in the summer of 2023 has since grown into a long-term commitment across Europe, Japan, and the US. Each cassette case becomes part of a growing constellation of relationships, offered by friends, strangers, artists, and non-artists alike. The only preconditions are that our paths intersect, the contribution fits inside the box, and that I won’t risk any legal offense by crossing borders with it.
Even with a contribution of 112 cases, not all of them are present in this exhibition. Some remain in the hands of those I may never meet again as empty promises or unfulfilled ambitions. Others are still waiting to be given and received. And so, the project sprouts little by little, in no particular pattern or direction– a strange and unpredictable growth.
Past Exhibitons
Ge-shuku, Kanazawa, Japan, December 2023
The first presentation at Geshuku translated European experiences into a Japanese context. The space was divided by a hanging cross structure. Each section charted time spent in different countries through cases, images, and records. Visitors sat on temple cushions, opened cases, and engaged in conversation. The show was intended to counter the more controlled exhibitions in Kanazawa.
The poster was created for the inaugural exhibition of the Dear All project, which featured a dual presentation. On one side, the exhibition displayed the 37 cases I had collected up until that point. On the other hand, the texts on the wall and publications provided context to my background, the insights I had gained during my time in Europe, and anecdotes from various relationships, countries, and time periods. This combination of visual and textual elements aimed to offer a multifaceted perspective on my personal journey and the broader themes explored in the Dear All, project.
Kunsttoren, Ghent, Belgium, June 2024
Dear All, in Ghent was inspired by a miniature-scale model of a solar system. It mapped imagined distances and positions to examine the relationships between the participants and me. The installation’s center referenced Belgium, where I first encountered bureaucratic challenges related to migration, and the location of the European Union’s headquarters, whose flag features stars positioned in a circle. The installation, like the constellation of stars, evoked planetary bodies and their common orbital patterns.
The archive and publication for Dear All, in Ghent is based on the mutoscope, a motion picture device from the late 1890s that functions like a mechanical flipbook with a reel. The publication spins around its center, becoming a miniature reference to both the bigger constellation in the exhibition, creating a movement similar to the large constellation it accompanies in the exhibition space. The experience of flipping through the publication is randomized, with each visitor continuing where the previous one left off. This approach eliminates any clear beginning or ending, making the interaction open-ended, fluid, and coincidental.
telos.haus, Brooklyn, New York,
United States of America, August 2025
Dear All, New York (2025), created with Abraham Coriat, reappropriated building materials and an oversized pillow to reference a bedroom where the memory of many is stored. The installation reflects my experience of building relationships from scratch in a constantly shifting city. Moving between beds and couches offered by strangers fostered forms of intimacy that contrasted with New York’s accelerated pace and the exclusive codes of gallery culture. This iteration emphasized social exchange and proximity, inviting slow-paced participation onsite and through a livestream at telos.haus.
I wish to extend my sincere appreciation to all those who made this exhibition possible.
Abraham Coriat
for your constant support, patience, and invaluable collaboration throughout Dear All,
telos.haus
organised by Soran Zhou and Karen Yang, for generously hosting the project
Milo Burr
for beautifully photographing the installation
Alejandro Tacher-Lois, Matthew Rebecchini, Joshua Piña, Leah Yutong Liu, Ruyi Xu, Echo Fengxiao, William Hu, Murray Lu, Yuki Takashima, and Harry Li
for tackling an incredible amount of work around construction, sewing, and breaking down
Jacob Lambrecht, Yanna Kok, and Ronja Kok
for thoughtful feedback during the planning stages
Empty Installation Photographed by Milo Burr
in 2023, shino matsuura began handing out empty cassette cases to those she encountered on her travels, inviting them to fill it with whatever they wished. anything went as long as the content fit within the clear, 4.25" × 2.75" norelco box and wouldn't get shino arrested for transport across borders. so far, she has distributed 112 cassettes - from the netherlands, to italy, to japan, and beyond - each one reflecting a unique bond carried and maintained wherever shino goes.
who is an "artist"?
what does it mean to be bonded with someone? how do you transport an ever-growing number of cassette tapes across continents?
"dear all," invites more questions than answers, in the artist's words, the project "is my guide through a journey of finding out how i want to, or even how i may, exist in this world."
previous iterations of this nomadic exhibition have appeared at ge shuku in kanazawa, japan (december 2023) and kunsttoren in ghent, belgium (june 2024).
for telos.haus, matsuura has collaborated with architect abraham coriat to create a site-specific installation: a custom-sewn curtain of debris netting suspended from electrical conduit, bringing the industrial grit of east williamsburg inside while creating an intimate viewing environment at sitting height.
shino matsuura & abraham coriat: 'dear all,'
august 15-17, 2025
telos.haus
303 ten eyck street, 2nd floor
brooklyn, ny 11206
Top left: J-card mini flyer
Middle: Hand-sewn and foldable invitation
Top right: J-card mini flyer inserted in a cassette case
Bottom: Exhibition overview of all cassette cases
FILET, London, United Kingdom, April 2026
The showing in London was done in close collaboration with Leanne Ghesquiere, a dear friend of mine who does curatorial studies in London, and Mees Noordzij, another dear long-standing friend from my hometown with an engineering background. We have been talking about the project since December 2025, and worked remotely via video meetings, until we saw each other again in April 2026 to set up. From the start until the end, working with them felt immensely natural and easy.
For the installation and on-site support provided to Mees, I would like to express my thanks to Alastair Gleeson, Julian Spanbroek, Marijn van Nunen, and Arsenii Bychkov. For the promotion and on-site assistance of Leanne, I would like to thank Antoine Chaudet and Rychon Tokromo. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Sonny Lazo-Banawa for contributing to the documentation of the exhibition, and to Lucas Buendia and Fidel Balthazar for helping with the deinstallation of the exhibit.
Last but not least, thank you to all 130 individuals who trust me every time again and again, and to all the very pleasant visitors who happened to be in London and came by to see our work.
I thank and love you all very deeply.
Really, every element of this showing felt in its place and just right. I have no regrets and look back with a lot of contentment.
Exhibition Booklet text written by Leanne Ghesquiere:
Driven by a wish to suspend time, Shino Matsuura (b. 2001) set about preserving encounters & memories, pulling them free from economic structures, institutional boundaries, and the speed at which we consume and forget. Matsuura's practice reimagines human connection as a free and shared global exchange of personal expression.
The cassette case, a relic of mass production, becomes her chosen container. Matsuura borrows it as a way of carrying intimacy across borders, offering an alternative to costly travel or digital distance.
Dear All, is a continuously evolving and itinerant art project. It is an installation, archive, and exhibition built on deliberate human connection. It is driven by feeling over methodology, and positions itself against the coldness and velocity of how we gather and exchange information today. At its heart, it sits with a simple but elusive question: how do we make relationships matter, and what allows our bonds with people and places to endure? Simultaneously a record and a compass, the project traces the places she has moved through while reaching toward those she has yet to discover. It is as much a personal reckoning as it is an artistic one, a way of feeling out how she occupies and moves through the world. What does it take to truly connect with another person? And once that connection is formed, what sustains it across distance, change, and absence?
Since taking shape in the summer of 2023, Dear All, has mapped its way through Europe, Japan, and the U.S., taking a different form each time. Each incarnation of the exhibition is site-specific, shaped by the environment in which it takes place. For this iteration, the installation is designed by Mees Noordzij (b. 2002), a lifelong friend and aspiring architect. The exhibition is co-curated by Leanne Ghesquiere (b. 2002), a new friend, who has brought the idea of Dear All, to London.
Shino, Mees, and Leanne collaborated on this project despite being geographically dispersed. Shino and Mees are based in Rotterdam – the city where all three first met, while Leanne has since relocated to London. The installation is a tribute to the connection they share and to the city where all their paths first crossed.
Matsuura hands out empty cases to be returned filled with anything the other person chooses: an object, an image, an instruction, an artwork, a trace of something lived. The exchange is open to anyone whose path crosses Matsuura’s, so long as what they offer fits the box and travels cleanly between countries. Each cassette case holds a different story of a connection. In order to move the collection across borders, Matsuura empties every cassette case, passing each object through customs separately before reassembling the whole. This is done largely from memory alone – an intimate knowledge of what belongs where and to whom. With 130 cassette cases in circulation, she now leans on an extensive catalogue that registers each case and its content, a record that has quietly become part of the archive itself.
Out of the 130 cassette cases, not all have made it into this exhibition. Some sit quietly with people she may never encounter again. Others have yet to be passed on at all. The project advances without an agenda, branching in unexpected directions, on its own unhurried terms.
We welcome you to sit, touch, and open the cassette cases. Take your time with each one, explore the different ways people have chosen to alter them, and read about the person behind each contribution: who they are, where the exchange took place, and what they chose to leave behind.
Archive 2023 - Ongoing
Abraham Coriat, Antonio Femia, Airi Ishida, Aoi Kobayashi, Alexis Medina, Anh Nguyen, Alyssa Oedit, Alejandro Tacher-Lois, Armangul Zeken, Bilal Gamal Abdel-Hafiz Ali Elsayed, Bianca Gi- uliano-Thomas, Boris Daems, Beljita Gurung, Brian Yao, Colson Ayars, Chrys’Amaya Michailidis, Christopher Nyborg, Christian Noll, Chihiro Okura, Caitlyn Phu, Charlotte Rood, Dante Marrone, Daniel Zeeland, Emma Aoki, Eli de Haas, Ezra Franklin, Eisuke Kikkawa, Enrico Marcon, Enya Mase, Emily Tanaka Kaline, Federico Grilli, Flore Sparrentak, Fernando Valdez, Giulio Dal Molin, Giorgio Kralkowski, Gigi Palmieri, Giordana Scarpato, Haru Asaki, Henri Badaröh, Hsin-Yu Chen, Honorö d’ O, Harry Li, Hayato Nagahama, Hikaru Takayama, Hirokazu Tanaka, Inge Braeckman, Ilinca Fechete, Isaac Kau, Isak Reinhardsen Vittersö, Jaden Graham, Jacob Lambrecht, Joshua Piöa, Jasper Stieve, June Yu, Koyu Amagasu, Kyoka Eguchi, Kazuo Hayashi, Kazumasa Kadoi, Katarzyna Kubrak, Ken Takeuchi, Kristina Tchikin, Leanne Ghesquiere, Leon Haga, Lena Hop- penbrouwers, Lisa Miyasaka, Layla van den Broek, Lotte Vocking, Milo Burr, Mikito Fujii, Mizuki Hatanaka, Motoki Ishijima, Minami Kobayashi, Momoko Kishi, Mees Noordzij, Matthew Rebec- chini, Marin Stephens, Miku Suzuki, Margo Vanneste, Mark van Hoek, Magnus John-Matti Vogel, Mao Wu, Nina Xin Luo, Nidhin Nishanth, Natasha Zibella, Paco Teepe, Reilly do Rosario, Reyndert Guiljam, Raphaöl Huraux, Rintaro Koiwai, Ronja Kok, Ryunosuke Matsuo, Ryan Ramos, Ryunosuke Tomita, Seppe Claerbout, Sammy Elsayed, Stoer Gothenburg, Souya Handa, Sonny Lazo-Bana- wa, Sophia Lewis, Shu Matsumoto, Satoshi Niwa, Sota Tatami, Sein Teramoto, Spencer Nordmey- er, Spijker van Duin, Sophia Vielma Fleischhacker, Senne Wettinck, Stan Wiersma, Soran Zhuo, Takeshi Aso, Takuya Fukada, Thom Jansen, Tohma Kobayashi, Takeru Matsuyama, Tsukiko Suga, Taiga Taba, Tim van den Bos, Umi Asada Bruce, Vera Kersting, Valentina Marchetti, William Hu, Ward Maas, Will Morrow, Yusuke Adachi, Yui Ishiwata, Yanna Kok, Yutaka Kobayashi, Zhixin Angus Liao, Zeger Vetters
The countries shown indicate where the cassette case was given. Other details, such as from where the case was received, the year and place I met the participant, as well as their country of origin, current place of residence, and cultural background, are only available at the physical exhibition.
If you happen to be at an exhibition and you have the pass code, you can see the full archive here
