Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere 南半球のクリスマス

Shimabuku creates works that rethink the things around us in our day-to-day existence. He questions our quiet, humdrum lives from a child-like perspective, through subtly invasive actions. Shimabuku characteristically documents his modest schemes using photographs, video, and text, and then places his record of the entire process on display. As an example, it occurred to him to offer some kind of present to an octopus in his hometown, Akashi. The video work "Then, I decided to give a tour of Tokyo to the octopus from Akashi" is his documentation of the octopus's capture in Akashi Bay and its visit to Tokyo accompanied by Shimabuku. Encountering him with his octopus, people in the city find their curiosity aroused and, before they know it, become entangled in his adventure-fantasy. "In Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere", Kobe, Shimabuku dresses up as Santa Claus on a warm spring day and stands displaying himself on a beach in Suma, Kobe. The image of Shimabuku meditating on Christmas in the distant, warm southern hemisphere, while somehow ludicrous, effectively sends our imaginations to the lives of other people living faraway, seemingly without relation to us. Thus, with distinctive humor and ideas that transcend common sense, Shimabuku lightly unravels our established, everyday perceptions and shows them from unexpected angles. For this very reason, his art fascinates and pleasantly emancipates the sensibilities of those he draws into involvement and even those who simply watch. A born storyteller, Shimabuku leaves it to the viewer whether to disregard his art works or laugh and embrace them. Either way, the talk and ripples of surprise those artworks produce, as well as unconscious reverberations that long continue in people's minds, are all a part of Shimabuku's narrative.