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installation art "幻象の庭" - Imagery Garden

by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell

Time : 10min

 

”International Art Festival BIWAKO BIENNALE 2022”

2022.10.8 - 2022.11.27/ Omihachiman city and Hikone city, Japan

WEB  https://energyfield.org/biwakobiennale/

Artist statement

by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell
 

Shadows travelling on the sea of the day is reached by driving through the rugged desert landscape, northwards from Doha, past Fort Zubarah and the village of Ain Mohammed. You may already glimpse the artwork from afar, situated on the horizon like a small informal settlement or industrial site. When you finally approach the artwork on foot, the uncertainty of what you are in fact seeing may stay with you a little while longer. The landscape – a vast, sandy plane dotted with desert plants, traces of animals, and rock formations – extends around you for many kilometres in all directions. Perhaps the shimmering line of the horizon is the artwork’s outer limit.

Yet it is not only you who have journeyed to meet up with the artwork. Its cool, hospitable shadows travel slowly across the sandy ground during the day and more rapidly at dusk and dawn. Above you, in the ceilings fitted with large mirrors, you may also – with the right amount of patience – detect these cyclical journeys.

Looking up, you come to realise that you are, in fact, looking down – at the earth and at yourself. Above and below, sand envelops you, together with anyone else sharing the space. To test what you see, you might extend an arm and wave to yourself or wiggle a foot while looking at your reflection. It is a kind of reality check of your connectedness to the ground. You are at once standing firmly on the sand and hanging, head down, from a ground that is far above you. You will probably switch back and forth between a first-person perspective and a destabilising, third-person point of view of yourself. This oscillation of the gaze, together with the movement of your body, amplifies your sense of presence, while the curving structures seem to vanish into the surroundings, dematerialising and becoming landscape.

If you look at the clusters of sculptural elements unfolding left and right, you may notice a quite extraordinary effect: the array of mirrors connects and perfects what is physically distinct and partial. The mirrors each reflect their own semicircular support, completing them into perfect circles. The neighbouring mirrors reflect the steel structures as well, creating a sea of interconnections. Reflection becomes virtual composition, changing as you move. What you perceive – an entanglement of landscape, sprawling sculptural elements, and visitors – seems hyperreal while still completely grounded.

Profile

saiho [Japan/USA]

Lives and works in the United States. Landscape architect and flower arrangement instructor of the Hofu Enzu school of flower arrangement. She has been interested in the relationship between people and nature since childhood, and is currently a member of the landscape design firm office ma, in San Francisco. Her recent works include the Dubai Expo 2020, Google Campus - Mass Timber, and japanese projects such as DNP's Ichigaya Forest and Hokkaido Nippon Ham Ball Park. Her artworks are mainly flower and nature-themed, for instance her piece "Beyond the Ocean" exhibited at BIWAKO Biennale 2020 and "To Mothers" presented at Local Love Art Festival in Oakland.

Sayuri Hayashi Egnell [Japan/Sweden]

Composer and artist based in Stockholm, Sweden.
In 2014, she was selected by Ryuichi Sakamoto to receive the Gold Prize in the ""International Sound Competition for Urban Space"". In the same year, she composed a piece for the Nobel Peace Prize in an exhibition organized by the Nobel Museum. She has been involved in a wide range of creative activities in Stockholm, including video production, installation, commercial and film soundtrack, sound art, and performance art production.
Major works include performance art "mori" (2016), mirror and sound art exhibition "Minnen"(2017), installation art "Beyond the Ocean"(2020), film music "The Aobas' Dining Table" (2021) and "My Boyfriend in Orange"(2022).

過去作品
installation art "Beyond the Ocean" 
by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell
Time : 12min
 
”International Art Festival BIWAKO BIENNALE 2020”
/ Omihachiman city and Hikone city, Japan

過去作品
installation art "To Mothers" 
by saiho
Music by 
Sayuri Hayashi Egnell
FIlmed by 
Elisabet Gallego Rigol

Time : 10min

”Local Love Summer Art Festival
July 27-Aug 1st 2021 
Oakland California, USA

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