Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Summer Festival
Yumi Takeuchi

watercolor (indigo), soil

2024

Summer Festival is the name of a festival in the area where I grew up, held in August during the O-bon period. On that day, dance stages and food stands appeared on the usually deserted streets, and there were many people regardless of age who spent a lively time there from morning till night. I was a primary school student at the time, and this festival was the only opportunity for me to go out with my friends at night. It was an exciting time for me but also brought me a mysterious feeling as if something might happen, or I might find something unknown.

Japanese O-bon is a time where boundaries between the other world and the actual world become blurred. This painting represents the moment where spirits, deceased people and such all invisible things and all incarnated things like the mountains, sky, animals and people celebrate together the day, along with the remembered scenes of the actual 'Summer Festival'. The Shishi-mai play in the center, in which people, animals and plants mix together as one collective entity, symbolizes this mixed world. The gourd-shaped vases surrounding it also exist as containing each world within.

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Totems, Installation view at Kunsthalle Trier, Trier, Germany, 2024, Archive photo by Andreas Thull

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Summer Festival
Yumi Takeuchi

watercolor (indigo), soil

2024

Summer Festival is the name of a festival in the area where I grew up, held in August during the O-bon period. On that day, dance stages and food stands appeared on the usually deserted streets, and there were many people regardless of age who spent a lively time there from morning till night. I was a primary school student at the time, and this festival was the only opportunity for me to go out with my friends at night. It was an exciting time for me but also brought me a mysterious feeling as if something might happen, or I might find something unknown.

Japanese O-bon is a time where boundaries between the other world and the actual world become blurred. This painting represents the moment where spirits, deceased people and such all invisible things and all incarnated things like the mountains, sky, animals and people celebrate together the day, along with the remembered scenes of the actual 'Summer Festival'. The Shishi-mai play in the center, in which people, animals and plants mix together as one collective entity, symbolizes this mixed world. The gourd-shaped vases surrounding it also exist as containing each world within.

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel

Totems, Installation view at Kunsthalle Trier, Trier, Germany, 2024, Archive photo by Andreas Thull

Summer Festival, Installation view at openspace, Nancy, France, 2024, Archive photo by Julie Freichel