What persists?
What is erased?
Time Capsule
2022 · Wood · Pigment · Plastic · Installation (Noh mask sculpture + mixed media)
This series encloses three original Noh-inspired masks in transparent capsules:
Blue Earth, KAGUYA, and AMABIE.
To seal a mask is not merely to preserve it.
It is to cast memory into the future.
Three figures sleep inside transparent capsules.
Blue Earth — an avatar carrying 4.6 billion years
of the Earth's memory.
KAGUYA — a visitor from the moon,
who should have already returned.
AMABIE — a creature from the Edo period,
crossing time to appear here, now.
To seal a face in a capsule is not preservation.
It is postponement.
We already know what is coming.
We have always known.
Each generation seals it away
and calls that a choice.
The capsule we hold today
was sent to us by those who came before.
We received it.
We did not open it.
We sealed it again.
Or not.
— Short Story —
Ⅰ．DECISION
Humanity stands before three capsules.
Inside each, something not quite human sleeps.
Open them, or leave them sealed?
We decide. We open.
Ⅱ．OPENING
Blue Earth: "The time has come to say goodbye."
KAGUYA: "I won't return. No — I can't."
AMABIE: "Fill the Earth with my clones. Now."
Ⅲ．ESCAPE
We should not have opened them.
Or perhaps there is still time.
We choose not to have heard.
We seal the capsules again —
and throw the entire planet into the future.
One great time capsule.
Waiting for someone, somewhere, someday,
to open it again.
Or not.