Shiina Takehito – An Egg of Snow Monster

Posted by Fabio 28 October 2009

Born in Hanamaki, lives and works in Sendai, Japan. Graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music with a degree in M.A. from Sculpture in 1999. Takehito Shiina is known for his Kazan-Yaki (Magma Firings): sculptural work series which he created on location at various volcanoes around the world. In the project, Shiina fired his handmade clay figures and made them into terra-cotta sculptures with the heat of magma near the active volcanoes in Hawaii, Italy and Japan.

Since this work, he has developed his production under the concept “Matter is Equal to What We Call an Image.” In 2007, Shiina organized a beach party called “Urato Drift.” Through music, this party celebrated the first group of Japanese sailors who were shipwrecked by a storm and drifted around the world 200 years ago during Japan’s period of isolation.

Over 20 local DJs, musicians and bands approved of this project to take part in this celebration. In the same year, Shiina was selected to be one of the resident artists of ARCUS Project 2007. For the project, he collected the “watching stories” of Kappa (a Japanese creature that exists in traditional folklore) by creating flyers, using the Internet and interviewing those who claimed to have witnessed Kappa. He then asked the witnesses to draw the image of Kappa. In his project, he combines these images in drawings by using morphing technology, presents the image of Kappa in a 21st century perspective, and develops them into a three dimensional sculpture.

In Shiina’s practice, we can see both the method of the anthropological field work and conceptualization of social sculpture. Recently, he has started to study for the new project “The Photosynthesizer Hypothesis” which investigates the methods to create a hybrid of plant and human being.