“When I went back to my hometown in Kumamoto, I had a chance to drop by my grandmother's house in a rural area for the first time in a year. I did not go inside that 200-year-old house because it was half destroyed by the Kumamoto earthquake a year and a half ago and no one lives there.

And I had not seen the area around the house for a long time. I had only passed by the side of the house, but due to the construction of an expressway that had been underway for several years, the expressway passed right next to the house, and the surrounding buildings were gone and the area was beautifully landscaped. Only my grandmother's house stood there, and it was a garish scene I had never seen before. I had only known the inside of the house, but for the first time I could see the exterior walls, the overall shape, the size, and how old it looked from the outside."

Excerpt from Mami Chihara's statement for the exhibition "Chiisai Ouchi" (2017)

Chihara attempts to question the relationship between the object and the outside of the object.

I first commissioned Chihara to exhibit in 2017.

When the artist talked to me about his work, I remember thinking something along the lines of, "I can understand it through his work, but do I ever really feel it in my life?

I had taken it that Chihara's expression might be metaphysical, with his intentions skillfully woven into everything from the materials to the captions.

Now that several years have passed since the exhibition, and I have been viewing her works from time to time, I have come to think that I might be able to experience a little of the world of Chihara's works now.

I am ashamed to say that this is a rather crude example, but the remote conference was one instance in which I realized this very well.

Although it has become much more civilized after the Corona disaster, many people must have been puzzled by this new method of communication at first.

Multiple windows and faces arranged in a pseudo conference room. In any case, "normal conversation" did not go as smoothly here as one would like. Since you don't know where to look, you end up looking at your own face, and since you don't know when the other person is speaking, it is difficult to know when you should speak or not. I can gradually get used to the moderator's guidance on administrative matters, but when it comes to small talk, I feel as if I am wearing glasses that don't fit and cheap headphones, which is inconvenient.

Remote meetings always start with no chit-chat and the agenda begins immediately after the greeting. Is the light in the room bad? Is it the camera settings? Everyone's expressions are either too bright or too dark, and it's hard to tell what they mean. The voices sounded unpleasant and shrill through the microphone, and I was getting tired just listening to them.

Finally, the meeting is over and it's time to chat. But when I thought it was time for chit-chat, I was told that the meeting was over and that everyone was dismissed with a quick, "Thank you very much" as if they had no more time.

I quickly launch my browser, thinking that everyone wants to get out of this crippling straitjacket as soon as possible.

Many people seemed to adapt to working remotely, but since my work does not involve many meetings, I eventually came to this point without being able to shake off the feeling of discomfort.

People who had adapted to the Internet and computers assumed that digital data packaged only with sound and text would be sufficient for communication, and I believed so because I had been enjoying the Internet since I was young. However, this case made me realize that human beings communicate with more information than I had imagined, including the speaker's breathing, slight hand movements, smells, and momentary eye movements, while sharing the same space.

It was a moment when I understood Chihara's attempt to question "the relationship between the object and the outside of the object" with a real sense of life.

Of course, I understand that what Chihara describes in his works is more like a slight feeling that may or may not be touched, and therefore, it is far from what I really feel. I understand that this is far from what I really feel, but I am sure that it is not completely different from what I feel.

It has been about seven years since then, and I am honestly looking forward to seeing Chihara's works again, which show a wider range of development since the last time I saw them, and I am happy to be able to introduce them to you again.

March 2024

Hirokazu Ishii