NYAB Event - Shihori Yamamoto “Akakabi”

Shihori Yamamoto “Akakabi”

chashama Gallery (461 W 126th St.)

This event has ended.

Utilizing her background in Architecture, Shihori Yamamoto creates large site-specific installations composed of building materials. Yamamoto’s work expresses her obsession with warm colors that has protected her from insecurity since her early childhood. In this exhibition, Yamamoto creates a site-specific installation, AKAKABI (red mold in Japanese) in the 461 gallery. AKAKABI expresses her persistent desire for control over the surrounding spaces by using a metaphor of red mold which everybody sees in their bathrooms. Red mold in a bathroom steadily invades the space from the corners to the rest of the bathroom. It must be something that everybody wants to get rid of, yet it in fact is something that you cannot really control without having a labor of cleaning the space very often. Yamamoto believes the persistency and stubbornness of the red mold are similar to her practice. AKAKABI consists of plenty of industrial cotton rags from the hardware store. Yamamoto hand-sawed them into large pieces, dyed them into orange-red, and has installed them to the walls with thumbtacks. Much like red mold does in a bathroom, her fabric red mold steadily invades the space and transforms the neutral environment into her comfortable warm colored environments.