Kawakami Airi

For me, painting is a “window” that both connects and separates this side of the world from the world that exists beyond the canvas. To paint is not to reproduce representations confined within the cage of language, but rather an act of encountering sensations that have yet to be named̶visitors who peer toward this side from the depths of the painted world, or perhaps the world itself. It is a form of bodily labor that takes responsibility for what is “difficult to comprehend,” and at the same time, an attempt to accept that living itself is a wellspring of the unknown. As I listen closely to the images, colors, and presences that gradually emerge, I paint as a servant to the voice of the work, granting poetry to nameless beings that exist beyond the window. To create paintings as their caretaker is the only sacred labor entrusted to me in this world.