Artist：Rei Naito、Ryue Nishizawa
Date：2012
Location：the island of Teshima, Japan
Media/Type：structure - Underground water, concrete
Commissioner：Setouchi Art Festival
Researcher： Hiroko Shimizu
Rei Naito is an artist known for her exquisite arrangement of small things in carefully prepared spaces. The title of the piece connotes a motherly figure giving birth to new life, and it takes its theme from moisture that seeps from underground.
The work is shaped like a drop of water allows wind to blow in from openings and water to spring out of the floor. The structure’s ceiling is open to the sky, disappearing into the ground in a gently shifting morphology. The building is a concrete shell, devoid of columns or beams, covering a space of 40 x 60 metres. There’s no immediately visible point of entry. The structure is almost completely empty. Its interior is fluid, organic and appears to inflate and deflate like a living organism. A concrete membrane carpets the ground and wraps up from shadowy edges to span as a low unobstructed dome overhead, expressing the natural beauty inherent in the materials and location. Through a melding of architecture, humanity and nature, it captures the relationship between nature and harmony.
Visitors are left gloriously alone in the space uncluttered by objects to absorb the structure and its natural surroundings. This contemporary and ethereal construction stands on a hill on the island of Teshima, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea. Teshima was one of the seven island venues of the 2010 Setouchi Art Festival 2010, the aim of which was to bring vitality to the islands of the Setouchi area. |
