Event
Date: December 13 (Tue.) – December 18 (Sun.), 2022
Hours: 11:00-18:00 ※Until 17:00 on the last day
Admission: Free
https://kyoto-muse.jp/exhibition/157413
Venue
Kyoto Museum of Photography Gallery Japanesque
https://kyoto-muse.jp/japanesque/
Access:374-2 Horiike-cho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto
Tel:080-5988-7720
Overview
In this exhibition “或 (æ)”, we tried to represent the existence of an invisible God as a visible entity.
It was caused by the sense of incongruity with religion that I felt when I lived in New York. Most of friends around me took it for granted that they believed in their respective religions.But I could not specifically say what I believed.
I just vaguely believed in a god-like being and wondered what it was.
These doubts led me to The Idea of Eight Million Gods (Yaoyorozu no Kami) in Shintoism.Shintoism (rooted in Japan since ancient times) is an animistic religion where God is everywhere: in nature, animals, things.Humans as well carry a divinity and could become Gods themselves. This culture was subconsciously rooted in me as a Japanese person.
Also there are different images and definitions of God for each person in this culture. Therefore I could not give someone a specific explanation. So I wondered if I could give form to the concept of Yaoyorozu no kami.
In order to express this, I chose the method of uniting different images of God for two persons who are subconsciously rooted in the idea of Yaoyorozu no Kami.In addition, by creating works with Japanese painter Aoi Honjo who has been collaborating with me before, we created works that unit the realistic world of photography and the unrealistic world of painting.
Soichiro Suizu
