T.T I-A 001 | OBJECTIVE MEDITATIONS, Artefacts from the Archive of Taiga Takahashi
T.T, Gion, Kyoto
April 26 to May 13, 2024
At the total art space T.T Gion, the first exhibition of a newly launched project, "T.T I-A (Institute of Archaeology)," opened under the title "OBJECTIVE MEDITATIONS." It set out to lay the foundation of the project by showing the roughly 2,000 pieces of clothing and objects Takahashi left behind.
T.T T.T I-A, continuing the Applied Archaeology of Taiga Takahashi
Archaeology is the study that reads human culture through relics of the past. Takahashi compared his own practice to this and named it Applied Archaeology. He was an artist who traced things back to their origins, read their structure and qualities with care, and from there connected this study to his own work in clothing, sculpture, and architecture. Dialogue with collected objects, craftworks made from rare materials, and meetings with craftspeople who have passed their skills down across many generations: these gradually shaped his Applied Archaeology.
T.T I-A began as a journey of creation that inherits this thinking, and that keeps in memory the historical way of thought and the process through which it rises up. In an age where mass production and mass consumption have become the norm, the project preserves relics that are being lost and learns from the past. From there, it asks whether new things can be brought into the world that hold their own beauty together with both function and long life. Holding this question, T.T I-A will keep researching garments and architecture that have survived across long stretches of time, the disappearing skills of craftspeople, the natural environment, and the spirituality of the Japanese people, linked to practices such as chanoyu.
Three materials, three storehouses
The exhibition was built around three themes: wood (architecture), stone (sculpture), and cloth (clothing). The relationship between each natural material and the forms made from it directly reflects the archaeological view that runs through Takahashi's work. Wood, stone, and cloth were each treated as a storehouse holding past information tied to human knowledge, and the traces of making and use left within them were put on display. The collected objects, lined up in rows, whether of natural or human made materials, were placed before the visitor as time capsules that seal in beauty and craftsmanship, still holding within them history, spirit, function, the essence of things, and refined technique.
What does the joint of a wooden pillar tell us about the craftsman who carved it, and about the building it once stood in? What did a stone basin once hold, and in what rituals was it used? The textures, hints, meanings, atmosphere, and memories carried by the work of human hands: through these, visitors took in their connection with the past through their own bodies.
During the exhibition, the total art space T.T turned into a meditative landscape, a place where new ways of exploring space and objects rose up.
