Artist Statement

Hannah’s Garden

When tracing the boundary between the public sphere and the private sphere in contemporary Japan using the folly, one cannot avoid re-reading The Human Condition written by Hannah Arendt. Inspired by this well-known philosophical text, I wrote an autobiographical novel titled Hannah’s Garden in order to clarify the ambiguity of the boundary between the two concepts. The novel took on its own life and directed me into a journey to my hometown in Fukushima after the disaster, where I was confronted with a collapse of the public and the private, and a need to re-figure these concepts from the rubble. I made six models based on Arendt’s words and the views that I came to see through the novel. I hope these models will be realized as follies in the future, as a site where people are connected and speak out in their own words.

Yumiko Furukawa