ALUKU. My domestic walking model Fukagawa 4th August, 2006- あるく 私の生活基本形　深川 2006年8月4日～

Sayaka AKIYAMA studied painting at university but later became famous for her works in which she uses embroidery to trace the routes she has walked. The process she employs to create these works is to stay in a certain location for a period then sew the routes she has taken in her daily life onto maps of the area. The work here was created when she spent two months in the vicinity of the museum on the occasion of the ‘MOT Annual 2007’ exhibition. Altogether it took approximately six months to complete. At first glance, it appears to be simply a drawing carried out using colorful threads and buttons sewn onto a white base, but if it is looked at more carefully, it becomes apparent that modern and Edo-period maps are projected onto it alternatively, illustrating the history of the area, loosely overlapped with the artist’s brief sojourn there. What the map shows is actually an abstraction of reality, that is to say a fictional space, to which has been added the artist’s trail, together with things she came across along the route-ribbons or buttons, etc., that have been sewn into the work by hand using a needle. The fabric is rucked by the embroidery and moved by the wind, while the map projected onto it assumes it exists in a flat plane. In it, the fiction inherent in maps, and the reality of the artist’s body seem to coexist, while simultaneously mutually restraining each other. A large number of AKIYAMA’s works have a map printed directly onto the base fabric, but using a projection in this way can be said to add further layers of meaning.