Color Cooking

Term: September 17 (Tue) - October 19 (Sat), 2024
Open: Weekday from 9:30 to 18:30, October 19 (Sat)
Close: Weekends, National Holidays

Artist: Eigo Iyama
Eigo is a 20-years-old autistic man living in Nagoya, Japan: the son of the owner of “tane”, a shop selling the products and artwork by artists with special needs in Japan. He has been working for many artistic activities since he was a little boy. Sometimes he scores his own music/sound by tiny long color papers. Sometimes he talks with the people whom he loves or hates in his mind. Then, he is asked to create these people by clay and he creates his fellows.

Producer: Kazutaka Hirota
Artist, member of "Art for Ordinary Life(AOL)". Started working as a fine art instructor for Eigo since this spring. A friend of Eigo's mother.

Kazutaka's Perspective on Eigo and His Works

When Eigo comes to the studio, I show him a grid paper as surface and a variety of tiny long papers as elements and ask him, “Would you like to work for collage?” He replied, “I would.” I have given these materials – grid papers and tiny papers – to many of my artists since I started working as a fine arts instructor. They enjoy working with these materials, but each artist shows a different attitude and gratitude toward the materials, then, each result is quite different from the other; Eigo carefully puts colored and printed tiny long papers along the grid lines on the surface paper. Squares with colorful contour lines appear on the surface; the size, form, and tilt of each square is a little different from the others and that creates a sense of the rhythm or the fluctuation of melody on the surface. Yes, it looks like music...or at least sound! When he is done with the collage, I put it on the wall. Sometimes he looks at his collages on the wall and touches them, like a Micronesian fisherman of the future reading a nautical chart and searching for his next fishing spot.

Sometimes Eigo starts chatting with someone who is in his mind – his favorite teacher, ex-classmate, club member, caregiver, etc. I can’t see her/him because s/he is in his head. While he is talking to her/him, I prepare a core material and ask him, “Who is s/he? I want to see her/him. Why don’t you bring her/him here by clay?” He starts to make the person in his mind at the time by clay. Everyone he brings here by clay is smiling. Oh, he seems to enjoy the conversations with everyone.

*The exhibition was featured on Disability Arts Online: https://disabilityarts.online/events/35th-exhibition-of-itbm-gallery-color-cooking/