Watch
Watches was my company since childhood, also since childhood I had a strong sense of the passage of time and the passing. When watches broke, I'd disassemble them and try to fix them without success. I also collected broken alarm clocks, which my nervous father sometimes threw against the wall. I'd find the scattered parts and try to put the alarm clock back together again, also without success. It's also the case that the ticking of the clock calms me, regardless of my age. Even as a teenager, I'd to fall asleep with my wristwatch snuggled up to my ear and listen to its steady ticking. I enjoyed the rituals associated with owning such a watch: checking the accuracy of the time and winding it every morning. When electronics became ubiquitous, all that was left was the ticking of the seconds hand, as long as the battery allowed. Also ticking is the wall clock at my grandmother's house in the countryside and its bimbos: one beat at half past the hour and beats that are multiples of the indicated full hour. The silence of electronic clocks built into radios or other small plastic cubes scares me.
Shell
I enjoy traveling very much. During one such trip, I fell in love with the Atlantic Ocean and its unfettered vibrancy. I enjoy looking at its immensity and watching the waves. I also always bring back some tangible, found in the field souvenirs from my travels. One of them is this that shell.
Cup
Coffee is the essence of the beginning of the day and thought waking up from a long, sometimes already forgotten sleep. It's a sensual experience of taste and smell. This cup is a symbol of the pleasure of drinking coffee.
Dress
My dress was sent to Sapporo to the Ainu women with the request, which I'm posting below.
I am sending my dress that my mother put on me when I was one and a half - two years old. It is important to me because it is a tangible trace of me as a little girl. Stroking it, touching, I stroke and touch myself from that time. I associate the dress with the innocence and vulnerability of a child completely dependent on adults. It is a time from my childhood when I suffered harm from adults.
Being a mature woman, I try to take care of that part of my personality that is a little girl. I try to protect what is most precious in her: trust, joy, openness to the world, kindness and love. I ask the Ainu women to help me in this care and, following their tradition, embroider patterns on my dress that will protect the little girl and strengthen her in who I am all the time trying to become as an adult.
Ainu pattern embroidery - Kimiko Naraki.
