This is a performance art called “The Kinokian rite”.
The main theme of Ai Hashimoto’s artwork is about her narratives called “Pink Tsunami” and its subsequent world about “Kinoko”. Kinoko is a creature with a mushroom head and it brings new life and new landscape in the post apocalyptic world after the Pink Tsunami disaster.
After the Pink Tsunami disaster, all living creatures seemed to be extinct.
Everything was covered with pink sand.
One day Kinoko came.
It was carrying a bag full of the essence of life.
Kinoko was alone.
It took the bag and put the bottom head into the ground.
It sat down in a casual pose for a while.
Small balls started to bubble on the surface of the bag and covered everything rapidly.
All of a sudden the balls all burst together and were absorbed into the pink desert.
Then new life began like bamboo shoots after rain.
Everywhere was completely covered with new life.
It was the beginning of a new era for better or worse.
After years, people are worshipping Kinoko as the God.
Kinokian is those who worships Kinoko as the god. This rite is related to death and rebirth.
For the performance, the Kinokian solemnly walks from the outside of the spiral into the center (the ceremony for death). She holds sacred pink sand in a large bottle. When she is in the center, she gently pours pink sand and walks along the spiral (the ceremony for rebirth). In the end of the rite, there is a huge pink colored spiral.
The concept of rituals is very important for her art practice because she would like to realize liminal status - ‘liminality’ for audience through her art works. In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rites, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. Through an experience of the rite, they could become a liminal status.
This performance provides the world between fictional and real world.