Statement
A Fuku-Daruma traditionally receives one painted eye when a wish is made and the other when it is fulfilled. For this work, a wooden daruma is made with the eyes omitted from its form, split in two, and fixed in resin with its left and right halves exchanged.
The cut faces now sit on the two outer sides, while the original curved exterior surfaces flank the resin at the centre. The wood’s curves define the resin’s inner contours, and the resin fixes the two wooden halves in place. The original daruma form is disrupted, but its curved wooden surfaces now shape a different sculpture together with the resin.
The title, Sōe, refers to things taking form through their relationships with one another. Just as people invest a daruma with wishes, we place expectations on things that matter to us, imagining how we want them to be. Do we regard something whose form has changed only as an incomplete version of what it once was? The work asks how we continue to relate to something that no longer takes the form we expected.