March 22 – May 11, 2024
Open: Wed.-Fri. 13:00-19:00 / Sat.& Sun. 12:00-18:00
Closed on Mon. Tue. and 04.29, 05.03, 05.06
Opening reception: Sat. 22nd, 17:00-19:00

MUJIN-TO Production is pleased to announce “Crematorium,” an exhibition by Tsubasa Kato.
Tsubasa Kato has been developing his expression using multi-layered media such as video and photography through collaborative performances, “Pull and Raise/Topple” project, in which he pulls up/pulls down structures with participants.

In this exhibition, he presents a new form of the boundary between self and others, which has been one of the themes of his works. On the occasion of his new work, Kato stated,

“If my performances taken at faraway places look like landscapes, this sculpture is a self-portrait that transforms the stories of the past into the possibilities of the future. After the death of my grandmother, I found a Japanese doll while sorting through her belongings, and it seemed to me that it was an entity that trapped her time. Then, in the midst of living with my newborn child, I began to take a fresh look at the custom of Sekku dolls (dolls of seasonal festivals). In Japan, while parents display dolls for their children, tens of thousands of dolls that have served their purpose are taken to the temples for a burning ceremony every year. Finding the collective nature of parents in this scene, I decided to create a self-portrait sculpture at this time of becoming parents and the loss of my grandmother.

In researching the Japanese doll, I was most interested in the glass case. It is an element deeply related to the history of importation of Art in Japan, and it is also the boundary that transformed the doll from a toy that could be touched to an object of appreciation that could not be touched. In the past, dolls were a symbol of prayer for the healthy growth of children, as well as a yorishiro (an object a deity resides in). However, with Japan’s rapid economic growth, dolls were mass-produced and overflowed into homes, and today they have become more of an object to be cremated.

During the pandemic, I could only see my grandmother, who was in a nursing home, through a glass door and could only exchange words with her over the phone. When the glass door was finally opened and I touched her hand, I felt as if the time that had previously separated us became one. The new work uses 3D scanning and sculpture to explore the relationship between doll and body, object and memory. Confronting the meaning of touch, the inheritance of memory, and the irreversibility of time, I superimpose the glass case on the cremation furnace to recapture the sense of distance in the cycle of our lives.”

Kato focused on dolls after experiencing the death of his grandmother and the birth of his child in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, an experience of death and life close to his heart. This was one of the triggers that led him to conduct research on the history of dolls, people’s beliefs, and their penetration into the public, in various locations since last year, with Grant for Research and Survey from Toshiaki Ogasawara Memorial Foundation.
Unlike his previous projects, which were formed through collaboration with people he met in various places in Japan and abroad, Kato, as a participant himself, connected his own theme to the realm of more real and universal experience beyond appreciation through the dolls that everyone would have touched or has touched.

This exhibition consists of 3D printed dolls, video installation, and research documents, intertwining multiple elements and events that boundary encompasses, such as history, memory, memorial service, rebirth, and sharing.
We hope you will be able to connect to the memories you once touched through the experience that cannot be touched.

Research support: