Work in Progress - 接点

Work in Progress - 接点

4 sets of drawings for my artist in residency in Kobe, Japan, Feb 1-28, 2026.

Charcoal powder, sticks and pencils, hairspray etc.

For my AiR in Kobe, Japan, I created 4 sets of works on paper, using only charcoal sticks, charcoal powder and charcoal pencils.

This series of drawings begins A Midsummer Night’s Dream — Shakespeare’s play of transformation, desire, and loss of control. In the original story, lovers wander into a forest where social rules dissolve, identities shift, and human and animal states blur.
During my residency in Kobe, I began to see parallels between Shakespeare’s imagined forest and the landscape surrounding the city. Mount Rokko rising directly behind the city, and the wild boar moving between mountain and urban space, a reminder that the wild is never far from the constructed.

I also spent time studying the architecture of Tadao Ando. His use of concrete, light, and spatial compression influenced the way I think about containment and release within the image. Structure and emotion exist side by side.

Instead of Titania, the queen of the fairies, I chose to work with the figure of Benzaiten, whose shrine at Ikuta Jinja I visited. As a deity associated with water, music, eloquence, and flow, she introduces a local spiritual dimension to the work. Her presence shifts the narrative from a European mythological framework toward one rooted in this place.

Together, these elements — Shakespeare’s transformations, Ando’s architecture, the movement of the boar, and the fluid authority of Benzaiten — create a dialogue between fantasy and locality. The works are not illustrations of the play, but rather translations: an attempt to let Kobe reshape the dream.