Artist statement
As a child, when I could see the invisible and hear the inaudible, how strange and full of wonder and joy the world was. If you look at yourself from that time, a story will appear.
When I look back at the works I have drawn so far, I realize that they are deeply influenced by the fairy tales and novels I was exposed to as a child. The most beautiful and touching sentences in the stories bring me rich images and take me to another world somewhere far away.
I hope my work will be remembered as a story that stimulates the viewer's imagination. That is what I am trying to do.
Akiko Yamaguchi
Kiku Jido (Chrysanthemum Child)
In the Zhou dynasty, a legendary samurai child was banished to a secluded region after incurring the emperor's wrath, and was granted immortality by drinking dew from a chrysanthemum leaf on which a sutra was written. It is one of the Noh plays, and is performed as a celebratory piece for longevity.
In my work, I have reinterpreted this legend to create a theme of love and devotion to life. It depicts a child projecting his own image onto an out-of-season red dragonfly and pondering over it.
Dialogue
"Is it possible to control man's mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness?" - "Why War? A Letter from Einstein to Sigmund Freud," July 30, 1932.
It has been a long time since the need for dialogue has been called for in a world of repeated disconnection and exclusion, but I have come to believe that in order to do so, it is important to be sincere to the other person and at the same time to speak in one's own words.
The girls playing "ayatori" (a Japanese birdcage game) remind me of "endless dialogue.
