Himari Tochioka received a B.F.A. degree (Oil Painting) from Kyoto Seika University, in Kyoto, Japan, in 2014. Additionally, she received a M.S. degree (Intermedia Art) from Tokyo University of the Arts, in Tokyo, Japan, in 2017. She is an artist...
Read MoreHimari Tochioka received a B.F.A. degree (Oil Painting) from Kyoto Seika University, in Kyoto, Japan, in 2014. Additionally, she received a M.S. degree (Intermedia Art) from Tokyo University of the Arts, in Tokyo, Japan, in 2017. She is an artist who works in the public arena ranging from landscape sculpture and earthwork to urban sculptural installations (Project EARTH PRINT). She is currently an Academic Support Staff at the University of Tokyo. Her recent art seeks new approaches to the natural environment.
Tochioka is exploring the structure of today's relationship between lights and people not only in the field of art but also in the catastrophe of “the emptiness of human sensitivity,” which arose from the development of civilization, such as Singularity. Her works are the projects to confront contemporary light, which is the nature of perception, by visualizing specific structures made of lights and noise in time perception.
Artist Statement
Contemporary Art as a Way of Awakening Contemporary Actuality
EARTH PRINT
Himari TOCHIOKA
How difficult has it become for us, in the present age, to stand firmly on the earth
(contemporary actuality) beneath our feet? Are we on firm ground? Personally, what I find terrifying is an earth that is still. As an artist, I want to look deep and hard at the essence of the present age. The desire to expose the essence of the earth (contemporary actuality), the place where we are born and where we will die, lies at the core of my practice.
Put simply, this concept takes the perspective that contemporary art could be the only way for us to expose the essence of the earth (contemporary actuality) where we try to survive and to awaken the quality of the present (confront contemporary actuality).
It engages this question by examining the practice of the visual language constructed by the artist. Put differently, this research posits explanations for the origins of An Expression of the Earth (an attempt to expose contemporary actuality) which was constructed as a visual language (art) as a means of confronting the contemporary actuality that had to be confronted in the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.
Seeking the Blood of the Earth—
Blood Survey / Revealing Red, the most common color on earth, is iron oxide. It is the main ingredient in red iron oxide (iron ore). An ancient color that appears in the lives of humankind each and every day, it also possesses the color of the earth. Iron oxide is one of the colors that rusting iron takes on. The intensity of the redness depends on the amount of iron oxide present. Thus, it can be measured in terms of pH values, which are a measure of acidity levels. After selecting a position with high acidity levels, which were determined by measuring the pH value, I produced what I call "corrosive traces seeped in rust" at the position of each river. (About pH values: A pH of 7 is neutral. pH values moving from 7 down to 0 become more acidic and increasingly red. pH values moving from 7 up to 13.5 are increasingly alkaline, and the color disappears.) I have taken the water of rivers, which have been rooted in the earth since ancient times, to be the blood of the earth, and the outer layer, which is expressed through the "corrosive traces seeped in rust" that are formed from the rust of iron oxide, to be the skin of the earth. By visualizing this relationship between the “blood’ that is rivers and the “skin” of the earth, I have attempted to reveal the most simple elements that the earth has as its essence.
