Hasegawa Kei

In my work, the act of thinking acquires form; in particular when it comes to feelings between ourselves and others that are unable to be explained using conventional language.

Since about 2017, most of my work has revolved around looking at people close to me. The sensation is one of dismantling the subtle shifts in feeling sensed when around that person, and what might be causing those shifts, until the constituents of those feelings become apparent, then examining them from various angles, and reassembling them.

This sensation, and that of weaving strips of bamboo, are by nature very similar. Having dispersed the natural form of the bamboo by splitting it, I gather together strips with suitable properties and use them to compose a work. In the month or two it takes to complete the work, both bamboo and thoughts take on new forms, and the responses thus generated, mine alone, accumulate inside me.

Social currents move faster every year, and a huge sharing of culture is underway that transcends geography and race. So as not to lose sight of myself within that, I am continually engaging in thought to confirm my own existence. Hopefully at some point my practice will go beyond the self to prompt or inspire thoughts in others.

P r o c e s s

The work is created using traditional Japanese bamboo craft techniques. I split a whole culm of bamboo by myself into thousands of strips with a thickness of 0.3mm. After that, I gathered the strips together in groups of ten and wove them together using bundled plaiting. The bundled plaiting that I used in this work is a weaving method I devised myself based of the traditional technique of tabane ami. While this new weaving method incorporates the characteristics of the traditional technique, it allows for a more organic expression than the traditional method.

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