Rewinding 2015
Used videotape & paper
A sojourner’s life is like a life of a traveler. A traveler needs to move on to the next destination even if she left behind her belongings in the place of the past - just like we sometimes should not be caught in our past, our memories. Our memories make us who we are, and at the same time, they bind us. In this installation piece, I expressed the condition of a sojourner with used videotapes. Videotapes can be rewound to watch scenes from our memories over and over. Thus, the used videotape represents a notion of ‘memories’ here. The crane is a symbol of happiness and longevity in Japanese culture. The color white represents the pure and original state. These cranes with many positive meanings are now caught in the tapes in this work. Some cranes are suspended by the tapes, and some are bound by the tapes. The postures of the cranes show the state of suffering. The older we become, the more memories we carry. It might be true that the more memories we have, being caught by them, the more difficult it becomes for us to move ahead. This piece looks chaotic and pessimistic at a glance. It is a very emotional piece exaggerating the expressions of the human condition. However, I hope people see hope in this piece. I hope people see that we share similar conditions of struggles and pains from the past. And yet, we know that we travel to the next destination, just like a crane can fly high and has a long life in that place to come.