Restrain & release Photoseries

Details:

Sculptural media: Me as sculptural media/model

Kinbaku Go Arizue / Tokyo

Photo: Yoshiaki Kita / Osaka

Scenography: Izuru Mizutani

“Restrain and Release” – an artistic research in which I studied the correlation between the concepts of freedom, control and submission – One of the essential questions of life in my view.

The works are produced in Japan and inspired by the bondage practice Shibari - amalgamating control and submission. I was aslo influenced by the raw aestetic of the ancient Japanese culture Jomon. Entitled ”Folded shapes” the glass represents my own body in conversation with rope.

I modelled for a shibari master, and translated the experience into glass shapes. I want to unfold: When are you in control? When do you go with the flow? Where is the line between power and submission?

This Sculpture is part of the larger project " Restraint & Release" This artistic research, has resulted in videos, photos and abstract rope/glass objects, that are conceptually connected.

Being introduced to the Shibari art was for me essential in this context and gave me a new understanding of my own relationship with materials i sculpt from. In Europe we often have a narrow view of Shibari as a sexual practice. But this was not the perspective I got to know in Japan.

Here it became a sculptural expression, where the body was the material, and where I had to rethink some basic questions - not just in my art, but in life as such. My aim was to not only to produce the objects, but also the entire artistic research that preceded them.

The collective work connects video, rope, and glass sculptures. Art project is made in collaboration with Japanise artist Izuru Mizutani, Photograf Yoshiaki Kita and Nawashi Go Arizue. Suported by Danish Arts Foundation and Aichi University of Education in Nagoya.