Bond

According to Japanese religious ceremonies, ropes and ties symbolize the connections among people and the divine, as a mean to identify sacred space and time.

Inspired by Nobuyoshi Araki's images and their mixture of raw violence and beauty, I study the relationship between man and nature by referring to the Japanese bondage tradition. The Japanese word for bondage, kinbaku-bi, literally means "the beauty of tight binding”. It is a delicate balance between being held together and being on the verge of breaking.

I search spaces where nature’s elements combine to create interesting natural tensions and continue this dialogue trough my interpretations by extending, wrapping and pulling upon these indigenous forms. I create a new sense of volume from the existing components.

Using ropes as lines is my form of drawing. The lines create interactions, making connections between the elements—a reinterpretation of the landscape. These three-dimensional drawings are physically unstable—they exist only for the moment. By recording the process the photograph becomes part of the piece.

Robert Smithson installed 12-inch-square mirrors to the site in his project "Yucatan Mirror Displacements" 1969. The mirrors reflected and refracted the surrounding environment and gave a new angle to see the landscape. In a similar tradition of Smithson’s use of mirrors, my lines show how shapes of the elements and the connections between them come visible when something alien is added. I’m not only changing their essence, but also my own point of view. Every space is different and I’m interested how the volume of any given site can be stretched by the use of several simple lines.

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