Bio Sculpture (Scene of a Future Boutique)

Bio Sculpture was created as a scaffold for other forms of life to inhabit and shape an ecosystem. Bio Sculpture — Scene of a Future Boutique imagines a future in which the sculpture has lost its original purpose and is bought and sold as decoration.

The work incorporates a section of Bio Sculpture that had been installed outdoors in Chiba City for approximately one year. Exposed to rain and sunlight, and inhabited by moss and microorganisms, the soil structure changed over time. It was subsequently presented as merchandise in an imagined boutique of the future. The installation was created for the Exhibition of Award-winning Works at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival.

What was originally a scaffold for other forms of life becomes an object whose form is viewed and owned. Its ecological purpose, and the time and relationships accumulated within it, are forgotten. Only the beauty of its surface continues to circulate as value.

The work does not simply ask whether sculpture should enter the market. When a scaffold for life is transferred into an object of viewing and ownership, what remains, and what is cut away? Does owning its form also mean owning the microorganisms that have lived within it, or the ecological time and relationships accumulated there?