On “Thinking of August 15, 2017 Summer”

 

This piece builds directly on the work I produced for the Recycled Art Exhibition in Busan, Korea. I had been making pieces using sewn tracing paper for some time, and had been considering daily calendars, which one touches every day, as material, so when I heard the word “recycling” I immediately thought of them. After trying various methods, I found that the technique of cutting identically sized forms and sewing them gave interesting and unexpected combinations of numbers and letters.

 

Just at that time, I was very sad to hear the news that Japan and Korea were at odds again over things that had happened in wartime, in connection with Armistice Day. As I pulled off the calendar leaf for that day (August 15), I dreamed of a peaceful future. 

 

For Korea, August 15 is a day of freedom and independence; for Japan, it is the XX day on which defeat in the war was finally acknowledged. This is not something limited to this date: across the world, in many countries with very different histories, many historical dates have completely opposite meanings depending on the perspective one takes to them. But the facts do not change.

 

In this work, I use the leaves of the calendar, all of them historical dates for someone on this earth, and, by cutting and recombining these dates, give form to a completely new historical shape.

With this, I express my hope that our generation, who does not know war, is able to overcome the excesses of the past and, while keeping those memories alive, can make a new and better future.

 

It is my hope that the form of the newborn artwork itself is better than the forms that were used to build it.

 

This artwork uses various kinds of paper: in addition to Japanese calendars, Korean and Taiwanese calendars, it also makes use of a novel by the Japanese novelist XXXX, who said extremely awful things about the comfort woman problem, fliers on the issue distributed in front of the Japanese embassy, and articles about the comfort woman issue and other things from Japanese and Korean newspapers. Not every Japanese person agrees with the positions of the Japanese government, or on the things the Japanese nation has done, is doing, or will do. Many of us are hurt daily by these things. I hope and believe that showing will be one effect of holding this exhibition of work made by me, a Japanese national, in Busan. 

​