INVOKE
2020, Udatsu Paper and Craft Museum, Echizen, Fukui, JAPAN
卯立の工芸館 福井県越前市
INVOKE
2020, Udatsu Paper and Craft Museum, Echizen Fukui, JAPAN
INVOKE was created in 2020 during the pandemic for an exhibition at the Udatsu Paper and Craft Museum in Echizen, Japan. Inspired by Japanese traditions of prayer during epidemics, the installation transforms handmade Echizen paper into a three-dimensional space where viewers can enter the image itself as an act of reflection, remembrance, and hope.
2020, 卯立の工芸館 福井県越前市
INVOKEは、2020年、新型コロナウイルス感染症のパンデミックの中、福井県越前市・卯立の工芸館での展覧会のために制作したインスタレーションです。疫病のたびに祈りの対象として掲げられてきた日本の仏教絵画に着想を得て、越前和紙を用い、鑑賞者自身が絵画の内側へ入ることのできる祈りの空間として構成しました。
Invoke, 2020
Udatsu Paper and Craft Museum, Echizen Fukui, JAPAN
Invoke grew out of an artist residency I participated in in Echizen in 2019. After returning to the United States with the handmade paper I had received during the residency, the world entered the COVID-19 pandemic. I later carried the paper with me to my hometown of Mishima, Japan, where I produced this work for a residency and exhibition in Echizen to which I had been invited the following year.
As emergency declarations were issued and the conditions of daily life changed dramatically, I was unable to travel to Echizen. The work was instead shipped to the site, where local papermakers and project collaborators installed it and completed it as an installation.
Working alone in a temporary studio in Mishima, I painted on each sheet of paper as an act of prayer for the world. Through the relationships formed during the residency, these sheets of paper had come into my hands. In Japanese, the words for “papers” and “gods” can both be pronounced kamigami, allowing the paper itself to be understood as something carrying presence, memory, and spirit.
During my research into the history of pandemics, I learned that for more than a thousand years in Japan, scroll paintings depicting the Shaka Triad and the Sixteen Benevolent Deities were displayed and used in rituals whenever epidemics occurred. These images served as objects of prayer for protection and for the dispersal of disease.
I transformed this traditional pictorial structure into a three-dimensional installation, creating a space in which the viewer could enter the painting itself. Invoke calls an earlier form of prayer into the present and was created as an offering for the end of the pandemic and for the well-being of people everywhere.
Back to Top ↑
Invoke, 2020
卯立の工芸館、福井県越前市
Invokeは、2019年に越前で参加したアーティスト・イン・レジデンスをきっかけに生まれた作品です。滞在中にいただいた和紙をアメリカへ持ち帰った後、世界はパンデミックに入りました。私はその紙を携えて故郷の三島市へ戻り、翌年に再び招かれていた越前でのレジデンスと展覧会のために、この作品を制作しました。
しかし、緊急事態宣言と社会の急激な変化により、現地へ赴くことは叶いませんでした。作品は越前へ郵送され、現地の紙職人や関係者の手によって設置され、インスタレーションとして完成しました。
私は三島で一時的に借りたアトリエにこもり、世界のために祈る行為として、縁によって私のもとへ届いた紙々（神々）に、一枚ずつ絵を刻みました。
パンデミックについて調べるなかで、日本では千年以上にわたり、疫病が起こるたびに、釈迦三尊と十六善神を描いた掛軸を掲げ、疫病退散を願う祈りが行われてきたことを知りました。 私はその伝統的な絵画構造を立体へと展開し、鑑賞者が絵画の内側へ入ることのできるインスタレーションとして再構成しました。Invokeは、過去の祈りの形式を現代へと呼び起こし、パンデミックの終息と人々の安寧を願って制作した作品です。
ページ上部へ戻る ↑
Explore More Works ↓
他の作品を見る ↓
