ARTWORK

Specimens of the spilled over
2024

Medium: Photo Painting
Photographic paper, Pigment, Nylon regin, Insect pin
H785mm W785mm D70mm

This series is a body of work to raise question about validity for artists and critics to use concepts like minority, diversity, marginality, and intersectionality.

Besides my work as an artist, I also handle numerous projects as a designer, some of which involve serving as a creative advisor for Tokyo 2020 or providing design learning programs for inmates, requiring utmost consideration for diversity and marginalized communities. Furthermore, in contemporary times, designs and expressions lacking consideration for diversity and marginalized communities are not tolerated. I fully understand the importance of such considerations.

However, I feel that there are many instances where the apparent “diversity” and superficial consideration for “marginal”/ “minority” disrupt the deeper understanding and thoughtful engagement with these issues. It seems like we are creating typologies of concepts such as marginal, minorities, and/or diversity, much like crafting insect specimens. By contriving new words that point to previously overlooked aspects and exhibiting specimens that correspond to these words, we may inadvertently be missing the tactile sensations, smells, tastes, or even the sounds emitted by the things hidden within the boundaries of words and/or concepts.

Within this series, I employ the extraction of latent shapes nestled within soundscapes through the utilization of spectrograms. These concealed patterns are then subject to a substantial amplification process, resulting in their enlargement. Ultimately, these augmented forms are rendered tangibly by means of  3D printing technology. These printed shapes are then coated with fluorescent paint and fixed onto the background image using insect specimen pins. The extracted shapes symbolize the ambiguity that lie at the boundary between words, difficult to express in language. Applying fluorescent paint to them serves as a metaphor for reducing the infinite nuances of the original subject into vibrant unicolor. Fixing them with insect pins serves as a metaphor for the violent act of specimen-like representation of things hidden in the boundary.