Have you ever heard about monarch butterfly migration? Some of you may have seen it with your own eyes. I haven’t, but as soon as I heard about it, the breath-taking phenomena caught me right away. Imagine tens of millions of monarch butterflies gathering to spend winter in a very specific forest in Mexico. They travel up to 2,500 miles from Canada and America to Mexico. I dream to see it with my own eyes someday, yet this amazing phenomena is in danger. The monarch butterfly itself is not an endangered species, but the migration population is quickly decreasing. Scientists said that climate change and the loss of habitat may be to blame. We are to blame.
If you get close to my paper monarch butterflies, you will see some print underneath the ink. The butterflies are made of second used paper, such as failed copy paper, old documents, random notes, drafts of my artworks, leaflets, postcards, news paper, food wrappers, and so on. The hundreds of paper butterflies are all printed and cut by hand.
Paper used to be highly recycled when new resource was much more expensive. Our effort to create new materials efficiently gave us cheap but clean option, making our life nicer, easier. However, recycling paper become an unattractive to both consumers and producers. Then we abundant the beautiful cycle. Unfortunately, cheap paper encouraged more consumption. The world paper consumption is increasing each year. I measured how much paper I used during a month and was surprised to find that it weighted almost 10 pounds all together. I thought I was cautious not to waste any resources, especially paper. I was stunned. Yes, I use a lot of paper for my art, but my daily usage of paper was much greater.
photo by Takeru Koroda
大蝶柱 / オオカバマダラの大移動（Column of Monarches）
120 x 350 x 120 cm (W x H x D)
古紙（新聞、広告、包装紙、使用済みコピー紙等）、インク、アクリル絵具、古麻布
Second used paper (Newspaer, leaflets, wrappers, feiled copy paper.. etc), Ink, Acrylic, Old linen
京都市立芸術大学ギャラリー＠KCUA
When I started to plan the installation, what fascinated me was the beauty of the migration phenomena, mysterious nature life behind the small body. But it doesn’t happen by a single body, but thousands, millions small body reacted in one direction…. The dreamy longing urge me to create……but as I dig deeper, longer working on this butterfly installation, the word “cycle” started to echo into my thoughts, and it got louder, and louder…
Paper cycle and mysterious butterfly cycle (there are 4 generation of butterflies takes charge to make a round trip from Mexico forest to Canada!), and now both cycles are facing obstacles, to be stopped go round…
My knowledge is very limited, but I feel that a lot of environmental issues are facing the difficulties to go round as usual…. Excess CO2 emitted couldn’t find anywhere to go back but lingering in the air, it stopped water to go round as usual…it causing extreme dry or wet weather… Actually, I imagine those cycles are not individually existing as a single rotate, but intertwined and influenced each other like gears in a precise watch. If one of small gear start acting strange, all the gears affected, and it never keeping time correctly.
Also, the butterflies I used for one installation will be dismantled, fixed and organized after the show, and it will be used for the next exhibit.Now all of them, but many materials used for the installation will be recycled as well, and I often think of the idea of reincarnation… Monarch butterflies are believed to bring ancestor’s souls back in Mexico. Actually, even in Buddhism, butterflies are considered to bring souls of dead to the heaven.
I am not an activist, but I consider that this can be a reminder for myself. A huge caution to pay attention to something I couldn’t see… It may be there behind the beauty of the phenomena, or already visible existing in front of me.
Curtain of Monarches
300 x 350 x 300 cm (W x H x D)
Second used paper (Newspaer, leaflets, wrappers, feiled copy paper.. etc), Ink, Japanese paper
at Arts &Kitchen Kamogawa
Installation
13 ft x 8 ft 25 inches
at The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park NYC
September 13 – November 13, 2013 (Notched Bodies: Insects in Contemporary)
This artwork was exhibited at the Arsenal gallery located in the east side of the central park in New York 2013. The Arsenal building was originally built in 1848 to house the state’s military explosives. When park construction began, it was purchased by the City and became as the first home of the American Museum of Natural History. The plaque in the center of the monarch arch is the memorial when the museum was built. The artwork is also celebrating the transformation from the military facility to the natural history museum.
