Lost and Found
Lost and Found | 2009
- Size
- Variable
- Medium
- Metal pipes, plastic holders, wires and found objects (toys, books, tissue box, heater and furniture)
- Exhibition
- Koganecho Bazaar, Koganecho Area Management (1-30 Sept 2009), Koganecho, Japan
The work developed in response to its location, a former brothel. situated among a row of other similar establishments in Japan’s Kognaecho area. The police had forcefully evicted its former inhabitants, leaving many of their personal items, domestic objects and furniture behind. These items as well as the marks left on interior of the spaces – stains on the floor, a hole punched in the wall –revealed tantalizing glimpses into the past that horrified as much as they intrigued.
In the installation, the flotsam and furniture of the brothel are incorporated into giant mobiles that fill each of the three rooms. A porn book, tissue box, heater and stuffed toy float around each other, creating new juxtapositions and narratives as they move towards and away from one another.
The mobiles are a way of freezing time, of remembering this area’s difficult past, and in their ability to generate new visual narratives, suggest a fragile hope for the future.