WORKS

About "Sea Drop" at the Setouchi Triennale 2019

This work, "A Single Drop of Sea," is an installation presented at the Setouchi Triennale 2019 at the former Shayamijima Elementary and Junior High School in Sakaide City. Its theme is the history of salt production in Sakaide and the layers of time accumulated in the land. Kagawa Prefecture was once known as "Sanuki Sanpaku" (Three Whites of Sanuki), and salt was an important industry that supported the local economy. In Sakaide City, large-scale salt field development progressed from the 19th century onward, and salt fields were also built on Shayamijima during the Meiji period. However, due to changes in salt production technology and industrialization, the salt fields disappeared in 1971.

This work, based on this historical background, is an attempt to reconstruct the memory of the salt fields that have now been lost due to land reclamation, as a spatial experience. The exhibition utilizes the structure of the old school building, and in the introduction, sand, salt, and old photographs evoke the presence of the salt fields lying beneath the ground. In the following darkroom space, the topography of sand and dripping water are combined to visualize the "flow of time" before the salt was formed. Further inside the space, salt stalactites are formed by water droplets falling from the ceiling, and the accumulation of time appears as a physical entity.

The process by which a single drop of water crystallizes over many years symbolizes the history accumulated in the land of Sakaide. This work is not an attempt to recreate a lost landscape, but rather an attempt to reconsider the relationship between land and people by allowing viewers to experience the relationship between memory and matter, time and body, as a spatial experience.