This painting is part of an ongoing series in which I depict objects encountered during my travels that I felt to be symbolic of a place. This work is based on a lantern sculpture I saw at the Nagasaki Lantern Festival, held annually during the Lunar New Year.
The series began with an experience in Hokkaido. During a short stay, I took many photographs at each place I visited, always with the quiet expectation that they might later develop into artworks. Although I usually rely on my phone, on this occasion I brought a digital camera with me. However, a few days after returning, when I tried to review the images, I realized that I had lost the memory card. Along with the photographs, I felt as though my experience itself had become incomplete. I suspect this was partly because I had been too focused on documenting the scene, rather than physically experiencing it. I describe this as a kind of “unconscious experience.”
In response, I created a bear-shaped sculpture, which is also included in my portfolio. To express the sense of a fading or inaccessible memory, I established two approaches: first, selecting a symbolic object of Hokkaido; and second, rendering it difficult to see. I chose a traditional wooden bear carving, obtained second-hand. I then covered it entirely with thick acrylic paint. This act originates from advice I often received as a child in painting classes—to apply paint thickly enough to obscure the canvas surface. Reconsidered now, painting becomes an act of concealment. By covering the object, I gave form to a partially lost experience.
In the next stage, I began to paint this object. By translating it into painting, I sought to create further distance from the original “landscape.” Through repetition, blurring, and the use of layered visual effects, I developed a method of producing unstable and obscured images—forms that are not fully recognizable, yet still retain a trace of their origin. This approach reflects the condition of “unconscious experience”: incomplete, ambiguous, but still perceptible.
Finally, regarding my choice of Nagasaki’s lanterns: I currently teach at Kyushu Sangyo University in Fukuoka, where since 2023 I have led a seminar project related to the experiences of atomic bomb survivors. The project aims to translate these experiences into painting, focusing on both the learning process and the preservation of individual memories, while maintaining a neutral position. Listening to these stories alongside my students, I have gradually felt the need to engage with this subject in my own work, even though I am not yet able to fully articulate it in words.
I began to consider whether I could approach this theme from a slight distance, and whether my work could function as a point of communication—an entry point for conversations about the project, as well as about the atomic bomb and war more broadly. Nagasaki, which we visit regularly, holds particular significance, as many survivors now living in Fukuoka experienced the bombing there. I chose the lantern as one of the city’s symbolic forms.
Although the Lantern Festival itself is relatively recent, it embodies layers of local history, including the presence and cultural life of the Chinese community in Nagasaki. The illuminated lanterns create a vibrant yet calm atmosphere—one that seems, at times, to gently obscure the memory of the devastating events that took place there eighty years ago. By depicting this present-day scene, I hope to create a space where remembering and forgetting can coexist, and where conversations about “that time” may begin.
This series focuses on qilin figures formed from lanterns—mythical creatures that appear to run through the air. Through these images, I continue to explore how memory, distance, and experience can be held in a shifting and uncertain form.