戸田沙也加

Sayaka Toda

According to the local government's land readjustment plans, the former atelier of a deceased artist, who had spent all his life making terracotta figures of nude women, is about to be torn down. After aesthetic concepts were introduced to Japan from the west in the second half of the 19th century, Japanese artists began to imitate that western aesthetic, and accepted a style of art that presented the naked female body as an integration of physical beauty that completely dismissed human qualities. Filled to the brim with myriad nameless nude figurines, the now ownerless atelier quietly awaits its demolition, faintly illuminated only by the dim light that falls in through the north window. I listen to the voiceless and ignored voices of these women that exist as liberated bodies now that the age of worshipping the naked female body as a symbol of beauty is over.