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Drawings on newspaper

 

Solo Exhibition - Erase and See- / 2023 / Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London, UK

In addition to an installation using Japanese newspapers, I  also showed a new installation using newspapers in the UK.

 

At the end of my day, when I have put my son to bed, I start work on these drawings. In the quiet of the night, I work by slowly crossing out the articles in the newspaper. And I shine a tiny light on the words and images that appeal to me. What will be shown by the act of crossing things out? And what will appear from the lights I leave behind? 
 
These works will be dismantled at the end of the exhibition and become single-sheet drawings again. Then new drawings will be included for the next exhibition, creating a new universe. The words and images that float up from the darkness connect together to weave new narratives. The works pull apart the normal linear axis of time from past to present and future, and create a space in which all of these are floating. These works have no beginning and no end. 
 
The spread of social media is accelerating the flow of time in society, and the past disappears along with that flow. On the other hand, what about the perceptions of time held by individual human beings? Individuals remember incidents deeply related to their identities or their lives just as though they happened yesterday, so they contain their pasts within them as they live in the present. I think the discrepancy between these two notions of time may sometimes be suffocating people.

photo by Taihei Soejima

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