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.