In the Jomon era in Japan, the other world was believed to be an upside-down version of this one. If it was evening here, it was morning there; if it was night here, it was day there. If we wear a kimono folded right over left here, they wear it the opposite way there. This mode of thought is called sakasagoto, literally “upside-down things,” and is still practiced in many parts of Japan as the custom of reversing various daily actions when someone dies.
In this room, the faces of actual clocks are reversed, their hands turning backwards, in sakasagoto fashion. When these old clocks run in reverse, images play within as if to remind us of funeral customs all but forgotten. Each clock, itself on the verge of being forgotten, stands there like the gravesite of a forgotten custom, blurring the boundary between the world beyond and this one.
At the time of her grandfather’s death, Oka placed blue hydrangeas in his coffin, and, when his cremated remains were found to be beautifully tinted soft blue, came to believe that placing the hydrangeas had been her own ritual send-off for her grandfather. Looking into the funeral customs that once existed in Japan, one finds that each harbors the unique thoughts and feelings of a small community and the people within it. No one alive can really sense those who have departed, or the afterlife, which is why we try so hard to imagine the next world, and the path leading there, and bring them within our grasp. Perhaps the very endeavor of that imagining is what informs the rituals that let us accept within ourselves the reality of death.
Exhibiting Artists
- Sakasagoto -Inverted Ordinary Life-
- OKA Tomomi
Sakasagoto -Inverted Ordinary Life-
Piece concept
Artist introduction video
OKA Tomomi
（Based in Tokyo and Okayama Prefectures）- 1992
- Born in Tokyo
- 2018
- Graduated Department of Intermedia Art, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
- 2019
- Studied at Berlin University of the Arts
- 2022
- Completed Master's Program, Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School
- Present
- Doctoral student, Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School
Awards received
- 2022
- Mitsubishi Estate Award (Tokyo, Japan)
- 2022
- Prizewinner, The 16th shiseido art egg (Tokyo, Japan)
Main exhibition
- 2018
- Solo exhibition "The door that leads nowhere," art space Kimura ASK?P (Tokyo)
- 2018・2019
- Open Space, Inter Communication Center ICC (Tokyo)
- 2022
- Solo exhibition "Twilight room," art space Kimura ASK?P (Tokyo)
- 2022
- shiseido art egg OKA Tomomi Exhibition "Sakasa Goto," SHISEIDO GALLERY (Tokyo)
