​Statement / Michiko Chiyoda

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”The more you try to forget, the more it stays with you.  When you need to let go of something, it is engraved in your heart.”—From Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time”

 

I simply don’t remember about the past or never really thought about remembering the past. 

I have never been one to hold on to the past, but after my mother's death, I found myself troubled by memories of her.

What I remember about my mother is mostly from the time I cared for her.

Changes in her suffering from a dementia,  unexpected events I have faced, and the way I dealt with her had become burdensome memories.

When she passed away, I intended to live carrying these memories and complex emotions.

However, the memories never faded, and now she is an unwavering presence, keeps reminding  me of them.

I began to wish I could forget. At the same time, I was also tormented by feeling guilty for wanting to forget the memories of her.

Then, I remembered a quote from a Wong Kar-wai movie and decided to re-examine these memories.

I sorted through my mother's keepsakes and wrote down those memories. 

As I continued this process, I often found myself contemplating her life. 

This process made me want to let go of them and entrust them under the ground.

I  chose the field for the safekeeping – a place I loved, where my mother and I often walked, a place that felt like it could accept and purify all.

 

I push my way into the field, dreaming of a journey to mourn and entrust my memories. 

Michiko Chiyoda

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Foreword / Shun Uchibayashi

"The Final Memory, A Burial of Memories - to the Earth, to the Ashes, to the Dust”

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Regardless of age, people think about their own death, and as they age, these thoughts intensify. This is no exception for the artist. However, before contemplating the end of her own life, there is a yoke she wants to settle with. This work narrates that yoke—a place for memories associated with a parent's death.

Ms. Chiyoda says most of the memories she has of her mother are from the time she cared for her.  As a critic discussing this work and someone who has also experienced the profound time of losing a parent, I deeply empathize with her. For those left behind, the story begins at the moment of death. How relieving it would be to bury such yoke-like memories, these stories that cling from the moment of her mother’s death, and things that her eyes unwittingly cling to. However, there is undoubtedly a significant dilemma: is it alright to bury them? This guilt seems to be reflected in her honest sentiment of “entrusting.”

Inside the small coffin-like boxes are several keepsakes as incarnations of her mother and items related to the artist’s memories. These memories must be thoroughly unearthed for the “Burial”.

Even without malice, memories are not necessarily beautified—there a raw truth exists. Ropes evoking physical restraint, small wooden planks that look like stupas or fortunes, tags from clothes with names can awaken humiliation. These will be buried unnoticed in the field.

The "entrusting" in this ceremony is used in the sense of delegating the handling of things difficult to conclude. Such things will never be unearthed again... probably. It is surely a parting in this life, represented metaphorically in a box containing a farewell cup of water.  Yet, "entrusting" primarily means keeping something safe until it is retrieved. Therefore, the field will forever protect the memories, waiting for its owner.

 

In 2006, an incident occurred where a man in his fifties, exhausted from caring for his mother in her eighties who suffered from dementia killed her. He also chose to commit suicide, but the attempt failed. The verdict in this 'Kyoto Fushimi Dementia Mother Murder-Suicide Attempt Case' was two and a half years in prison with a 3 year-parole. After the sentencing, the judge remarked that “It is not only the defendant who is being judged here. The caregiving system and the welfare system are also being called into question.”

Considering the defendant's state of mind at the time of the incident and the judge's sympathy, it teaches us that the inappropriate emotions sometimes harbored by caregivers are not unusual. These are feelings that are almost never spoken aloud. However, the fact that fulfilling caregiving duties, as Chiyoda did, does not necessarily free one from these emotions, is also a reality that must be acknowledged.

Memories carried silently, unexpressed and unliberated. This work serves as their burial. However, it is not merely a personal act of burying Chiyoda's bezoar of memories in the earth. Viewers who feel empathy upon seeing this work are, in effect, participants in this burial procession.

 

When keepsakes and memories, as incarnations of the mother's body, are subjected to a quiet burial, the words written about 500 years ago in the burial chapter of the Book of Common Prayer established by the Church of England release us from the yoke, transcend religious and life-and-death views: 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' Memories intricately entangled will be eternally buried in the fields. It is thought that Christians have long chosen burial because the body must be resurrected on the day of the final judgment. This awareness also signifies nothing less than entrusting the deceased's body to the earth in search of eternal salvation. 'Please be liberated from the yoke and the dilemma.' It may sound presumptuous, but that is what I, who have accompanied the creation of this work, most want to say to Chiyoda.

 

 

 

 

Shun Uchibayashi (Photographic Historian and Critic)

 

After being an invited research student at Université Paris I, he completed a postdoctoral program at the Graduate School of Arts, Nihon University. He worked at a gallery and was a postdoctoral（PD )researcher for Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) before becoming independent. He is involved in photographic history research, criticism, higher education, and adult education. In 2023, he founded Stylo rouge, undertaking art direction for photo books and exhibitions. His main works include "Photography's Longing for Painting" and "The Story of Photography: A 400-Year History of Image Making