Beginning your ground
Production year: 2017-
Format: Installation
Size: φ4000 × H2500 (mm)
Material: Wood, Styrofoam, Artificial turf, Flower paper
This participatory installation is designed as a mountain on the outside and a cave on the inside.
Visitors enter the work and create flowers while sharing memories or stories about important people in their lives with the artist or with others present.
Inside the space, participants layer thin hanagami (flower paper) sheets to create their own unique flowers.
There are no specific rules for how the flowers should be made; each visitor relies on their own memories and imagination to shape their creation.
The artist remains present in the space, making flowers together with visitors and listening to their stories.
Completed flowers are placed inside the cave or inserted into the mountain outside.
When participants feel ready to “leave the cave,” they climb a ladder, breathe in the outside air, and step out of the space.
The installation gradually transforms as more flowers are added through visitors’ participation.
The work was created from the idea that the landscape—both literal and metaphorical—can be changed through the small actions of individuals.
Approximately 200 people participated in this work, creating flowers while sharing memories of making flowers in their childhood or stories of people to whom they wished to give a flower.
Because there were no rules for how the flowers should be made, some participants created their works freely, responding to the materials with their hands and following their own curiosity.
Care was taken not to set a clear goal or time limit, allowing each person to spend as much time as they wished until their flower felt complete.
The space was intended to offer the comfort and safety of a park-like environment, while providing a gentle theme—“making a flower”—through which participants could think and reflect as they worked with their hands.
As time was shared with the visitors, it became clear that the feelings they expressed—making a flower while thinking of someone, or wishing to give it to someone dear—were themselves a form of art.
Exhibition History
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Feb 26 – Mar 3, 2017
The 65th Graduation and Completion Works Exhibition
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum / The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts / Geidai Campus, Tokyo -
October 2019
Precious Situation
NEWTOWN / Digital Hollywood University, Tokyo