Artist Statement

Yoi Kawakubo

In my works often themes of social and historical origin such as nuclear energy issues, or social
state of Tsunami damaged areas in North Eastern Japan, are combined with topics of philosophic
nature, like cognition, language and the ontology of photography and art, altogether in a mixture
of photographs, research, installations and texts.
In many of my works one of the themes is the medium of the work itself, like the light, the print
or the frame in photographic works, or the room, the time and the locality of the venue in
installation works. This comes from a strange obsession towards the self-referential loop, that was
present since my studies at the university on the philosophy of language (specially L.
Wittgenstein) and later in linguistics and brain science.
Another main concern in my works is the nuclear energy topic. I have been visiting the restricted
area of Fukushima for two years and making works related to Fukushima and the nuclear energy
dependence. Japan is the only country in the world that has been atomically bombed and has also
suffered a level 7 nuclear disaster. The reason why the nuclear issue is important is very clear, it
has the power to exterminate all life in the planet, but apart from that, in Japan there is a lot of
corruption, and unclear government treatises and national budget going to unclear usage,
altogether in a dark box system where the democratic or legislative systems are distorted.
The actual system of the whole society in Japan, that is very similar to other occidental countries,
in terms of economy, social structure and infrastructure went down in 2011 in Japan, leaving
uncovered the fragility of the current capitalist based system.
Since then I have also been doing research and making works related to the Tsunami damaged
areas of Tohoku, participating in a art project backed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan,
where 5 artists from all around the world did research and art projects with artists from Japan in
strongly damaged areas in Iwate prefecture. The state in which people there, still living in
temporary houses, arises a fundamental question, what people need to live? And what role can art
play in a basic situation?