MIRAI MILKY WAY

MIRAI MILKY WAY (GreenFes, Grand Green Osaka, Japan)

In a green plaza opened in the heart of the city, I created an installation that takes the Milky Way as its subject. Borrowing a gesture from Tanabata, the Japanese star festival in which people write their wishes on narrow strips of paper called tanzaku and hang them out beneath the summer Milky Way, I loosely linked together ribbon-like strips of mesh, each differing in color and length, and gave spatial form to countless wishes turned toward the future. By controlling, in three dimensions, the curve of each single strand and the gradation of color across the whole, I sought an appearance that shifts moment by moment as it catches the light and the wind, holding within it the complexity and beauty of a starry sky. Over the course of the exhibition, cards written by the hands of visitors were tied on one by one, and the work grew denser day by day. Each wish set down came to lie beside the wishes of others, and within a run of only three days, as many as 1,800 wishes gathered together to raise up a single Milky Way.

MIRAI MILKY WAY (GreenFes, Grand Green Osaka, Japan)

都市の只中にひらかれた緑の広場に、天の川を題材としたインスタレーションを制作した。願い事を短冊にしたためる日本の七夕の所作を借り、色も長さも一枚ごとに異なる帯状のメッシュを緩やかに連ねることで、未来へ向けられた無数の願いを空間化した。一筋一筋の曲線と全体の色彩の階調を立体的に制御することで、光や風を受けて刻々とうつろう様相を作り出し、星空の複雑さと美しさを宿すことを目指した。会期を通じて、訪れた人々の手で記されたカードがひとつずつ結ばれ、作品は日ごとに密度を増していった。書きとめられた願いはやがて他者の願いと隣りあい、わずか3日間の会期の中で実に1800枚もの願いが集積し、ひとつの天の川を立ち上げた。