Digital prints on paper / 29.7×42.0 cm / 2014

 

The theme of this work is the collective trauma experienced by Japanese people following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that was the largest magnitude ever recorded in Japan. 

The work employed the method called decalcomania, which is a Surrealist technique and was originally used by Oscar Dominguez. This method has also been known as the Rorschach test. Acrylic paint is the most well-known material, however, I have used inkjet paint in order to consider Walter Benjamin’s argument that original objects lose aura due to duplication. The images I collected via the Internet were first printed on the paper with no water absorption and then transferred to the inkjet paper with water absorption.  

 

Because this is a natural process, the outcome is affected by chance and is beyond control. This results in a different image from the original picture and the method critically challenges the main feature of photography which is that it is duplicable. Therefore, decalcomania with inkjet has an opposing approach to that of the original source which were mass-produced photographs used for newspapers and mass media. 

 

This uncertainty of images decalcomania produces might be seen as exfoliation of information. However, like human memory, this might be the process of returning to daily life. The decalcomania with inkjet and this work suggests the possibility of recursion to the normal state and thus express the possibility of production and reproduction of feeling safe. 

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