A visitor to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture, touches “Time of Farm Tools,” an artwork of old hoes and plows hanging in an exhibition space painted yellow.
NIIGATA, Nov. 1 – An artwork that looks like farm equipment such as hoes and plows are floating in the air, are attracting attention in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture.
The artwork, titled “Time of Farm tools,” is one of the programs of this year’s Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, a world-class art festival held once every three years in Tokamachi and Tsunan in the prefecture.
Contemporary artist Tatsuo Kawaguchi created the artwork using old farm equipment borrowed from farmers in Tokamachi.
Kawaguchi hanged 22 farm tools from the ceiling with wires and fixed them. He asked local farmers to take postures of using the tools and pose while he measured the angles with a laser, so that he can precisely replicate how the tools look like when they are actually used.
Visitors can touch the tools on display and feel the actual moves of farmers as if they are in stop motion.
Shoji Kaihotsu, a 74-year-old farmer of Tokamachi who cooperated in creating the artwork, said, “I hope visitors will feel the days when the farm tools were used and the passage of time.”
The artwork will be on display until Nov. 13.