Memory of Space
Historic Street Art Festival in Sasayama (Sasayama City, Hyogo Prefecture)
Year : 2013
Medium : Aluminum foil
Size & Weight : 80H x 45W x 180D (cm), 2kg
60 years ago, this machiya, traditional wooden merchant’s house, was an oil store.
A yellow gasoline pump across the street tells the history of the store, Takada Shoten.
To re-create bustling old days, I created cast-off shells of Super Cub motorcycle.
It’s been 10 years since the yellow retro gas pump caught my eye at a corner of the Tsumairi Merchant Housing District in Sasayama City.
Although I wondered why it was there, I never thought about it deeply.
When I finally entered the machiya, I felt an extraordinary sense of “history” and “emptiness.”
It also gave me an intriguing sense of time, feeling “this was the predecessor of the modern gas stations of today.”
As the relationship between the gas pump and machiya became clearer, scenes of when it had been bustling popped into my head.
In this art project, I placed the era-defining cast-off shells as a symbol of the time and attempted to re-create memories and ambience of that vibrant era.
I hope it will serve as a time-tunnel to connect visitors with the “memory” and “imagination” lingering in the back of their minds.