Live painting in Minamisoma, Japan.
Title: Chaos
acrylic on canvas
After 11 years, I painted what I thought the next 10 years and 100 years would look like. Then came the word chaos.
I could not say that I painted this picture as a powerful statement of what lies ahead for the recovery. Somehow, I painted the breath of many thoughts and feelings of the past 11 years that have become muddled and yet I wanted to express them.
In particular, on the first canvas, I could not see the color of the cherry blossoms that I should have been able to see. I painted this indescribable feeling in pink, gray, and yellow.
One of the mayor’s manifestos, which he commented on after the event, was “chaos. He said that chaos is not always a bad thing.
*Chaos means a state in which things are mixed up without distinction, or a state in which things are disorganized and not coherent.
Background of this time…
After returning from France, I realized that last November 4, 2022 was the 11th year of 3.11.
I wanted to face the 11th year of the disaster as an art form on March 11, 2022.
It was on that day that I was contacted by someone who wanted to introduce me to someone who was mayor of Minamisoma at the time of 3.11.
And today, I was able to do live painting in Minamisoma.
Mr. Sakurai, who was mayor at the time of the earthquake, slept in the city hall building for 50 days from March 11. This was an opportunity for him to do some live painting, so he talked about “color” in two ways.
The first was about the scenery of the city at that time. I was impressed that he said, “I don’t remember the colors at all” and “Everything around me was in black and white. He remembers the colors of the cherry blossoms he saw in Tokyo, but he has no recollection of the colors of the cherry blossoms in 2011, when they were supposed to be in bloom in Fukushima as well.
The other was the color of the sun at that time. He wakes up very early and watches the sunrise every day, but the color of the sun, which should have been orange, looked like your bad purple.
With the view of such a story in mind, I went to the stage for today’s live painting.
Today, Mr. Sakurai, the former mayor of the city, and other video production people also took videos.
Thank you also for taking us to Minamisoma.
It is truly thanks to all of you that we were able to create art. Thank you very much.