Swimming across Fiction
MURAKAMI Aya

A band of light is projected on the wall, and a paper thread strung across from the window casts a shadow as if it were invited by natural light. They draw our attention to the hand in Calling Shadows. Directed by the fingers to To the Forest, and we feel as if we were invited to the crooked road in the depicted forest. Looking up at Migratory Bird and going under it, we reach a small room full of shadows. The work In the Forest spreads like a book put side by side, which reminded me of windows. When I sit on a chair at a desk, I am surrounded by trees made blurry in a fog or snow. A glass spoon on a paper plate glows in dim light, and the black lead inside the spoon looks as if it were moving like smoke from its design. When the viewer goes under the paper thread, they go through a kind of threshold, and it feels like it is a ritual to leave this place.
　Hashimoto says that she plans the spatial arrangement by regularly visiting the exhibit venue. For her solo exhibition at ACAC, she used areas with different heights of ceilings, and on top of her plans made before her application and the image training with models, she repeatedly had dialogues with the space during her residency. What Hashimoto does before she draws is photographing shadows of leaves in the forest andconstructing scenery from there. She takes pictures of places for reference, and she makes rough sketch and completes a work by referring to them. This series of activities during her stay resulted in In the Forest. It was temporarily put in space at the stage of rough sketch and was completed as she checked the whole balance again. Consequently, she used 8 sheets of Arche paper, and out of about 50 pictures she referred to, she partially took out compositions and put them together to make the whole scenery. Thus she creates scenery that does not exist. As for To the Forest which she completed before she came to the residency, the pictures of places as models were edited and sublimated to a drawing. A meticulous pencil drawing is not a realistic one of the existing scenery.
　Next, I would like to look at Hashimoto’s trial in this exhibition while remembering her statement, “making scenery in which here and faraway are mildly connected.” How the hand is about to touch the shadow of the thread in Calling Shadows refers to the connection between the gallery and the world inside the drawing. In To the Forest, a folded and protruding surface casts a shadow on this side, and the scenery on the other side protrudes to get involved in the space on this side. As the composition turns our eyes to the end of the road, viewers are drawn into the unknown scenery. Additionally, in In the Forest, the space is arranged in such a way that the light from the window and the shadow of the architecture are reflected. The black lead in the glass spoon in Meal for You gives us the impression that it might move out of the paper plate and would slip into someone’s mouth. Differentiating brightness of outdoor scenery from dimly lit indoor in drawing, she seemed to enjoy drawing which was uncontrollable.
　In Hashimoto’s private tour Crossing Shadows held during the exhibition, participants received guidance directly from the artist and freely viewed the works with “The guide for your travel” handed to them. They did not need to use full 30 minutes. Hashimoto said that she prepared a basic episode every time for her exhibition, but she did not share any text and kept it to herself. Based on her experience of Other Rooms, joint exhibition with KANO Shiho, she made a new attempt of providing the guide for your travel and directing the viewers.
　She usually does not give clear hints to interpret stories. The patterns and the touch shown in Calling Shadows are not traceable to any region or culture they belonged to, and universal motifs such as a hand in the work, leaves in To the Forest and a road do not specify any place or season. The guide for your travel only provided the viewer with manners, and the imagination margin was left.
　If something is found in the scenery generated by nature and things, it is due to people’s thought and not by the phenomenon consisting of the scenery or effect of things. The guide for your travel is finished with the words “It’s all fiction,” and it was made clear that the created scenery was fictitious. For this fiction, the space was completely made up, the scenery was created to make the viewer imagine, and let them play around in the space. How she provided the space was similar to that of a store owner or a gardener, and if I may add more, it was similar to a poet rousing the space and time with combinations of familiar words. What she provides through her work is time to rouse the imagination with the help of the space.
　Gaston Bachelard wrote that when a house was considered as space for cheer and intimacy, going from reality to fantasy was inescapable, and the simpler the depicted house would be, the more it would rouse our imagination and sharpen our senses [1]. Hashimoto Akiko lets people swim in the fiction with the space she casually but carefully laid out. The viewer passes under the paper thread to go inside, follows the shadow of the leaves as time passes, and moves around to again go past the paper thread and returns to the original place. The flying bird of passage would be the viewers themselves who go back and forth between dreams and reality.

[1] Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. (into Japanese) Yukio Iwamura (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2002), 107‒108, 111.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. (into English) by Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 48, 50.
https://sites.evergreen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2015/05/
Gaston-Bachelard-the-Poetics-of-Space.pdf
[Translator: NISHIZAWA Miki]