saiho

This is our installation work presented at the BIWAKO Biennale 2022 in Japan, an international art festival, at the former Senkichi Moromikura of the Yoshizo Hirai family, a soy sauce brewer. We created a meditation garden in the interior space of a dark storehouse.

On the exposed ground, white spider lilies bloom profusely, and images and sounds are projected on them to express the transition of nature from morning to night in the late summer, as well as light and atmosphere. The viewers are asked to sit on the floor next to it and look into the “garden of the heart” that lies deep in their memories through their senses.

It is a work that attempts to reconsider the relationship between humans and nature, the universe, and life through each person’s memories and experiences.

(LINK TO BIWAKO BIENNALE)

by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell

In our art installation, “Beyond the Ocean” at BIWAKO Biennale 2020, the message of artists who could not cross the ocean in a world closed by the pandemic was delivered to the venue. We also asked visitors to write answers and messages to the following three questions at the venue.

Q1: What words came to your mind through your work?
Q2: What do you think is important to you now, what do you realize is important?
Q3: What would you like to say to someone you want to meet but can’t?

This installation at BIWAKO Biennale 2022 was created in the former filling room of the former Senkichi Moromikura, with the messages received from visitors at BIWAKO Biennale 2020. What has the pandemic done to the way we live and think? Or did it yield nothing? It is a work that tried to touch the “feelings” of us from two years ago.

by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell

This is a Mother’s Day installation I have done at Ocean Beach, San Francisco. I decorated 100 carnations on the beach in gratitude to mother earth, all mothers, and my mother across the sea. It remains as a video work.(LINK)

“To Mothers”

To Mother Earth…
To all the mothers…
& To my mother over the ocean…

Thank you, and happy mother’s day.

——

Installation by saiho
Sound by Sayuri Hayashi Egnell
Film by Elizabet Gallego Rigol

This is an art installation exhibited at “International Art Festival BIWAKO Biennale 2020 ‘Shinra Bansho – Cosmic Dance’”. A sandy beach where the sun sets is set up in a room at the back of an old sake brewery. Messages from 12 writers who were unable to cross the ocean due to the pandemic have washed up on the beach.

Visitors enter the sandy room with lanterns, hold the light up to glass bottles, and read messages from the artists. They can also write messages to artists who could not come to Japan or to someone important to them and leave them in a small glass bottle. Beyond the ocean as the sun sets, it represents somewhere physically impossible to go. There are artists who couldn’t come to Japan, or someone’s important person who can’t meet.

With many people feeling lonely and isolated due to the pandemic, this art installation attempts to transcend physical distance and connect people through their “feelings”.

by saiho + Sayuri Hayashi Egnell