>

Masami Saito

Cultureland artist 2019
Reflecting like a mirror,
water sets us free
Human activities transform in reaction to environmental conditions in a similar way as a human body does. Organs and skin are like close strangers; they possess their own consciousness .
To save their living territories from water, the Dutch made canals, dikes and polders. To me, they work like organs in the landscape. Understanding this system of polders and canals is like digging in a body and looking at how it communicates to the outside. I visualize how the body is affected by impermanence, being a product of the endless battle between nature and man.
“The world is nature, and in the long run inevitably wild, because the wild, as the process and essence of nature, is also an ordering of impermanence.” -Gary Snyder

My project at the residency aims to visualize how my body is related to the natural surroundings. I’m going to gather motives outside, focusing on geographical structure of landscape with the polder, movements and colors of water in the landscape which can be observed near my vital activites like eat, sleep, move, breathe…Such an observation with my physical experiences should let my body perceive the relation with nature in the new place. The motives I found from this research will be for example drawn or printed on paper which are to be formed into organic shaped objects suggest functions of body and inner organs. These motives will be also combined with materials like foam, soft and thin wire and plaster which suggest skin structure and shape of inner organs. This combination shows that the views of the place are mingled with the physical feeling of my body. Each work is installed in the whole space for the presentation, resembling a landscape of the place which is reflected on body- and organ shaped objects.