EXHIBITIONS

“Yesterday, a wild tanuki was found dead under the eaves.”

“Yesterday, a wild tanuki was found dead under the eaves.”

Sakuho ito 2024.12.3.(Tue)〜2025.1.9.(Thu)

The wild tanuki was under the eaves of my studio,
It was curled up and dead as if sleeping.

It wasn’t being played by a car,
It was as if it had chosen this place of its own will and died there.

I cried naturally, and at the same time, the blood flowing through my own body, which I had seen in my childhood, came back to life.
I felt the blood flowing in my own body.

In a corner of the city center where modern people come and go
I turned my eyes to the life and death that coexist in our daily lives,
and embodies the worship of pulsating life.

In this exhibition, Ito attempts to express “life” with stillness and dynamism, based on the theme of “worship of life,” which has been Ito’s theme for some time, through her recent experience of the death of a wild raccoon dog and her own childhood experience of “encountering the color of life (blood),” which was evoked through the experience.
The exhibition is as if she is talking to her acquaintances in the city about this experience.
With the hope that it will be an opportunity to reflect on “life” as a part of one’s daily life, rusty washi paper as a symbol of life and death, and red rock paints and pigments representing blood as a symbol of life, will be filtered into the washi paper.

ARTIST PROFILE

SAKUHO ITO

SAKUHO ITO

Sakuho Ito was born in Shimane Prefecture in 1989, and began her art activities after graduating from Musashino Art University in 2014. Using her unique method of making Japanese paper, as well as metals, clay, pigments, and more, she continues to explore and express the tranquility and transience born from the calmness of the heart, which she experienced in her childhood, and the fundamental spirituality visible in the activities of ethnic groups. She perceives and continues her expression within the lineage of abstract expressionism.

In recent years, she has connected with the Shinto philosophy that reveres nature and life, engaging in activities that "Nestling close to the soil, and braiding the spirit of the land with the souls of its dwellers." She stays in various locations, incorporating soil and sand collected from those places into her works, creating pieces that worship the life of the land, which she then dedicates to shrines and other venues. With the production of the dedication piece "Worship of Life" at Izumo Taisha Shrine in 2023, she continues to inquire about "worship" as her lifelong expression.

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OVERVIEW

TITLE
"Yesterday, a wild tanuki was found dead under the eaves.”
DATE
2024.12.3.(Tue)〜2025.1.9.(Thu)
CLOSED
None *Please view from the street.
VENUE
anonymous bldg.
ADDRESS

5-1-25, Aoyama Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan