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Akiko Utsumi

For Lots of Lost Windows

Akiko Utsumi   For Lots of Lost Windows

source: akikoutsuminet
This exhibition was held in an area that suffered a great earthquake, the Chuetsu Earthquake, in 2004. I exhibited the work 2 years after the disaster occurred. Therefore, I wanted to create work that functioned as a means of mourning. I took the very typical rural scenery of the area and framed it within the windows creating an experience that was much more private, as if looking upon the scenery through the frame of one’s own window and curtains. I installed a small staircase that allowed viewer’s to face the view and recognize the scenery anew, one-by-one. Part of the scenery changes as time goes by, but another part has a lasting quality. The swinging curtain makes a sense of a certain time visible. I think this work succeeds in allowing the multiple layers of time to emerge as well as affirms the existence of continuity and duration..
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source: echigo-tsumarijp
The view seen from a window of a room becomes “my view,” a window for rediscovering the scenery of Echigo-Tsumari spreading outside through the view seen from the window. Its waving curtains reflect the breeze. When she visited Echigo-Tsumari, the artist was overwhelmed by its nature. She resolved to create a work like a flower that would blossom modestly, without disturbing nature. Fluttering curtains brought sunlight and the breeze of satoyama wind to visitors’ hearts.
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source: akikoutsuminet
I extract the characteristics of motion pictures such as time, light, and movement and amplify them into the space. While the moving pictures provide images, and present significance (signifie), I also attempt to create a intersection between fiction and the real place. The tension between these two elements is manifested in the installation that we can experience with all our senses. When the motion pictures are “replayed” in our eyes, we can indirectly experience these events. I am trying to draw the indirectness to directness by making perceptual image. That makes it possible to sympathize with the past or the time that has not come yet. At the same time, the scenery is one of the material themes. I intervene or construct new scenery by proving the remembrance of the site. Photography has represented the scenery from its origin. Despite of the abundance of material that surrounds us, we desire to experience them in alternative ways. It may mean that the world is hard to grasp and our desire is to notice actuality. My intention is to re-capture and re-experience the world through the perception and glimpse of the multi-tiered image.