Pointing hands with a real sized hand and a shrunk sweater(sculpture)

When I was walking under the super moon, I felt like I was pointed by something. In general, pointing someone is really rude but at that time, but I was so relaxed by the pointing finger. And I found that the hand is my hand. From the inspiration, I suddenly decided to make hands from fabrics, the reason why I used fabrics was for making something which has a soft impression. I thought that there should be pointing fingers which can comfort people. I experimented to combine the hands and my shrunk sweater. The shrunk sweater looks like tightening me and the big pointing fingers look very soft but they are controlling me and a real sized small hand is trying to escape from the sweater. When you are embraced by someone, you feel very comfortable. The shrunk sweater may have two opposite ideas like protecting tightly and controlling you tightly.

If I make many shrunk sweaters and record the processes of making, this may be going to be a interesting artwork. They will be released from their identity as a clothe which is like the idea of Fischli and Weiss’s furnitures made from Polyurethane. Releasing objects from their slavery is really interesting way of seeing the world. Making useless things would be my next aiming point.

A tea party box with questions(installation)

One day, I got an idea to make a box for lying down inside of it. And then suddenly I started to create the box with card boards and fabrics which are water proof. I didn’t understand why I wanted to make the box. The process of making the box, some people told me that the box looked like a camera, a space ship, a submarine and a tube. I put silver foil inside and I put a lid for finding a face of the person inside. After the completion of the box, I realized that it looks like a confession room. When I stayed inside of the box, I felt that if someone will open the lid, it would be very awkward to face the person. Always when you see something, there is something being seen by you. I realized that the awkwardness may connect to my difficulty of communication in not mother tongue language. I usually hesitate to speak in English because I don’t want to confuse people and I sometimes feel that I don’t know what I want to say. I sometimes feel like the words are coming out for trying to escape from the situations not for the real conversation. I realized that what I want to do is a real conversation. When I was in non English spoken countries, I could communicate more. Probably awareness of ignorance helped me to focus on the people’s expressions from their faces, hands and eyes. Communication should be more about beyond languages. So I decided to make questions in Japanese written in alphabet. English speakers can pronounce the sentences but they don’t understand. If they want to know the meanings of the questions, they need to open the lid to ask to me. If they say “watashi wa ashi?(Am I feet?)”, I ambiguously just answer to the question like “I think everyone is walking their lives even if you don’t have feet, so yes you are”.

The idea for using questions is from Fischli and Weiss’s “Will Happiness Find Me?”. They made an installation with a video of ambiguous questions putting like snakes. Thinking about questions which have no answers forces people to walk in darkness. And when you can’t see anything, what you can do is just thinking. From their artwork, I decided to out the tea party box in darkness. 

I used to use F and W’s questions for making my artwork, but I decided to make my own questions because I realized that if I make them by myself, I can make them in natural Japanese.

Last year, I made many small books from an English book, I used them for presenting my questions. The questions are written in English alphabet but English speakers don’t understand. The confusion plus small cut dictionaries may make people think of what the understanding is.  If they want to know the question, they need to ask me.

I made a movie of the full moon. If I use a projector to hang the moon above the box, people can read questions in small books. I took a video but the quality is not good. So I’m planing to retake when the next full moon appears. The reason why I’ve chosen the moon is from a book “1Q84” and a film “the Truman show”. “The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring”(1Q84 Haruki Murakami).The moon would embrace you with things whatever you've done today.