Kyoto has a long history and many temples, shrines, and other sacred spaces. Drawing inspiration from the streets of Kyoto, where the passage of time and flow of life are palpable, Ninagawa has created an exhibit around the theme of light and shadow. The exhibition is a fully immersive one, filling the entire Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art and comprising a series of ten pieces that have been created from visual and spatial installations made specially for this exhibition. Visitors are invited to enter each piece in the series in succession to become the protagonist of their own otherworldly picture scroll story.
The entrance to the exhibition is a corridor from which the pieces can be seen, and the streets of Kyoto can be seen through the windows, serving as a space that connects the real world and the otherworldly. Once visitors enter the exhibition, they move through a series of pieces about the abyss of the beyond, from a piece dyed in the deep red flowers of the beyond to a piece that uses more that 1,500 strands of crystal garland to express the inspiration of life, and spaces that carry the visitor through hell or where artificial flowers bloom with abandon.
The images used in the exhibition are all actual photos taken mostly in unassuming places in the course of daily life. No computer graphics were used in the creation of the images. This exhibition is not the first time Ninagawa has taken up the theme of light and shadow in her work. By incorporating a darker palette that uses shadows and colors into the brighter palette that combines the light and colors of everyday life, the artist creates a sense of oppositions: light and shadow, this world and the beyond. This series of ten pieces creates experiences that arouse a variety of emotions in visitors, stirring their memories and providing inspiration and a stillness in their hearts. The immersive nature of this series brings visitors into each piece, creating an experience of coexistence between the self and others.
The pandemic and all the conflict in the world makes it a chaotic and confusing place. This has led people around the world to start placing more value on finding the time to reflect, and different types of introspective practices are beginning to grow in popularity. We invite visitors to use this series of picture scroll experiences as an opportunity to come to terms with themselves just as they are. The pieces in this series facilitate this through the experience of sharing memory and feelings, gently blurring the lines between light and dark, this world and the beyond, artist and viewer, others and self.
More than 4,000 flowers of the beyond are woven together to create a space steeped in deep red that completely envelopes visitors. Visitors find themselves suddenly plunged into a completely deep red space, a dramatic shift in color that signals an entrance into the beyond, which works together with the flowers as a symbol of the beyond to evoke emotions in the visitors.
As they enter this space, visitors bring with them enough movement of air to gently move the roughly 1,500 strands of crystal garlands hung throughout, with a diversity of lights dancing all around as the crystals quietly sway. From a distance, these strands resemble some colonial life form shining with a myriad of different lights, but from up close visitors will discover that they are strings of imitation gemstones in all kinds of shapes, from crystals and butterflies to hearts, eyeballs, and cut gems.
Six wall-size glass panels, half featuring photographs of a field of flowers, butterflies, wisteria flowers, cherry blossoms, and an underwater scene, all woven of light and shadow, and half with pearlescent filters, are arranged in pairs. As visitors enter the space, light is cast onto them through these pearlescent panels, which creates a sensation that the entire space is gently swaying. The light that shines through these glass panels symbolizes memory, emotion, and the passage of time. More than just something to look at, this space lets visitors undertake a journey into the deepest parts of themselves that can be illuminated by this light.
One of the highlights of the exhibition, the abyss consists of two spaces: one that moves through a hellish landscape, and another, full of artificial flowers, to contain the other. In the outer space, visitors can suddenly a plethora of flowers in bloom from within the abyss, creating a world that resembles both the depths of the underworld and the living world above at the same time. The overall effect is the construction of a dream-like vision of the beyond that visitors become a part of by being in the space.
