PINK TATAMI
Installations / Performances / small works
Tokyo | Los Angeles | Chicago
Pink Tatami | installation, partial view
Okurayama Memorial Hall, Yokohama, Japan
photo credit: Yoshi HashimotoP
"The idea for PINK TATAMI first came to me after I had spent the entire day cleaning the twenty four tatami in an old uninhabited wooden home in Tokyo. I pulled the tatami up out of the sunken floor into which they fit so snugly and piled them inside the room that was soon to be my new home and studio. I had never seen the underbelly of tatami before, nor the guts of a traditional Japanese-style room left exposed by their removal. It was a beautiful, vulnerable image."
Tatami is a woven floor covering made from rice straw unique to Japan. The tatami room, revered and respected, is used for the tea ceremony. Before entering a Japanese home, shoes are removed and slippers donned. Before entering a tatami room, the slippers are removed.
Tatami is shibui, a Japanese word expressing a quality of beauty which is unassuming, unpretentious and humble. Pink is anti-shibui. In Japan the "Pink Industry" is the pornographic / prostitution industry."
Pink Tatami | installation/performance | Japan
photo credit: Yoshi Hashimoto
Pink Tatami | installation, partial view
Okurayama Memorial Hall, Yokohama, Japan
photo credit: Yoshi Hashimoto
