ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

Miyu Akira：
For me, the most important thing is the “production space” when I am working as an artist.A place that is willing to do woodworking which emits a noise.
There are various merits, such as the surrounding area being a place where materials can be easily gathered, home centers and recycle stores, but above all, we would like a place where we can communicate with our neighbors. Because the hardest thing is to make it in a place with an ashamed feeling.

In these instances, Takasu House has few adjacent facilities, and we are so close to our neighbors that we exchange vegetables with them, making it a very comfortable place to live. I got involved with Takasu House about five years ago as a short term artist residence for the Toride Art Project “Half Farmer, Half Artisan,” and now I spend time there as a caretaker.


I had originally painted as an oil painting major, but at the end of my freshman year, I was given a free assignment and decided that there was nothing I wanted to paint that I wanted to show anyone.And I stopped painting. Then, I began to respond to other people (including non-humans) and began to deal with social phenomena and social issues. I have been searching for a way to show my work as an expression of fascination, and have now arrived at a form of spatial expression and performance as a way of showing it to people in their daily lives.

MADE IN JAPAN　(2018)

 

2020’ZOO　(2020)

 
However, I believe that it does not have to be my own work that I create. From now on, I would like to install and generate things created by the artist in various places.

As an installer, I am still in the process of improving my skills and not quite where I want to be, but I dream of large-scale phenomenal art, like Banksy’s amusement park, for example .Anyway, our goal at the moment is to continue to connect with people.
Art is important to society. I would say that art is also important among many other things.

In my case, I continue to create because I want to think. My everyday questions, anger, and sadness become the starting point for my thinking in the process of creation. Then, I will give my thoughts and opinions with my own output. Generally, what we want to think about is something that is not black and white or taboo in the world. Therefore, when I try to think in words, I cannot think well. Therefore, I would like to create a place where people can think with the viewers and others involved, rather than giving out answers.
 
 
Rubii Miyoshi：
I paint. Until now, my main activities have been painting and showing my works in galleries, but things are changing a bit now. I am exploring ways of expression other than painting, such as using words and looking at culture in a new way, which could also be my expressive activity.We believe that self-expression can take place outside of the art field.

SKIN　(2019)

I have loved making things and drawing since I was a child and wanted to become a traditional craftsman or painter in the future. I continued to study painting as an extension of my studies, but I think it was during my third year undergraduate that I clearly recognized that I was creating art as a form of self-expression.
I was inspired by seeing a friend of mine, who was clumsy and, depending on one’s point of view, could be perceived as lacking in social skills, connect more and more with the people around her through her creations. I felt that if I could be more like myself, others might accept me as I am. At that time, my attitude and desire to express myself changed.

This was a familiar and memorable place for me, as I commuted to Toride campus in my freshman year at Tokyo University of Arts (Geidai), and continued to live in Toride for two years after that. I graduated from Geidai,but I learned about Takasu House through a friend I met there.Takasu House is also an open space to assist young artists in their production.I stayed for three months, traveling back and forth from my workplace to create a large 3 x 3 meter painting, which is difficult to do in other shared studios.

I live in the skin of vacuousness　(2020)

 
The environment surrounded by nature, such as fields and riverbanks, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and the relationship with Miyu Akira, an artist of the same generation who shares her creative life with me as a caretaker, the people who use the gymnasium just behind the house, and the residents of the neighborhood, en and women of all ages, was fresh and very comfortable for me as I have done most of my work inside my university atelier.

I often found myself so immersed in my own world that I was able to ignore life and create, but I was in the process of rethinking my style. Being able to spend this period of time at Takasu House, where I could take on both production and daily life, was a valuable experience for me to think about my own behavior in situations where I was not being driven by production.
For now, I do not intend to vigorously exhibit my work in galleries, but rather to focus my efforts in a direction that will allow me to live my life with my feet on the ground.

I chose the thrift store business as a way to earn money for a living.Simply explained, we buy things from individuals and collect them in the market, store, maintain, and organize them, and sell them at antique markets to the next recipient. When we buy things, we sometimes visit the home directly to organize the belongings of the deceased. We cannot purchase everything that the person has left behind with a value and price. At that time, antique dealers are asked, “Then what should we pass on to the next generation?” I am constantly improving my insight and senses so that I can make such judgments accurately for a better future without being biased only by my own subjectivity.

Since I have become involved in this work, I have come into contact with objects that have been passed down from hand to hand through the ages and left behind by people, and I also feel that the range of my senses and perspectives is gradually changing. I am now more interested in the materials themselves, since I pay attention to the texture of the objects and the way they are handled to determine their value. I also think that I am thinking more about things within the scope of culture rather than art.

Up until now, I have been devotedly engaged in creating art because I was interested in deepening what was inside me, but now I feel a deepening interest in the world and society outside of it, in the world in which I live and come in touch with. For me, painting has been around since I was a child, and it is the method of expression with which I am most familiar. I believe that I may be able to express myself in this way, and that I may be able to confront and relate to others in this way.

It is not possible to live a life completely devoid of human interaction, and perhaps we can only find joy through human interaction. As long as that is the case, I will continue to refine my own expression while searching for various ways to express myself.