​Artist Statement

I have investigated the auditorium as my theme, related with the different views associated with phenomenological ideas, the urban landscape as collective memory, the absence and presence, and contemporary expression of prints. I have also inquired potentialities of multiple and reproducible aspects of printing.

 

Inspired by the view from the stage playing the violin in my childhood and the philosophical thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: to see and to be seen, I have created a series of artworks whose theme is the auditorium. Ordinarily, we are more concerned with actors on the stage in the theatre, but through my works, I aim to show things the other way round from the performers' perspective.

 

As a metaphor for the transient nature of life, I conceive the auditorium where the audience come and go anonymously, like unknown ancestors and individuals in the past and future. Further, I have developed my ideas into the notion of anonymity, equivalency, and ambivalence.  Currently, the empty theatre may connote the environment of lockdown and represent the impression of the situation. However, I started this series as the expression of the invisible human body several years ago. Further, I intend to depict reflected light from the stage, based on traditional Japanese aesthetics that value dim light in the darkness.

 

In addition, I research the influence and difference of aesthetics between the UK and Japan since the 19th century, for example, Kanae Yamamoto who was a founder of Sosaku Hanga (Creative Prints), Bauhaus, and artists in St. Ives, associated with Modernism. I attempt to behold culture from various perspectives. In my recent series, I have engaged myself in lithography, etching,  Japanese woodcut print, photography, abstract, and mixed media, inquiring what contemporary expression is through the representation of light and space as theses of art.

​