About The Work

Since 2021, I have been creating photo collages based on my past experiences of violence. The basis of the piece is thousands of photographs documenting the immediate aftermath of the assault over the past 15 years. Layering thousands of photographs together creates a voluminous body gradually. Here, the effect of machine learning using training data from photos is also used. The key point is that the subject is not my own body, but "a fictional body made tangible by pain. In other words, you see here is a ghost, and the sedimentation, shaped by an accumulation of documentary photographs.

I didn't choose to become a model myself. Rather, the "pain" that preceded it sculpted me a model. In front of the finished work, It is not important who I am. because I am nothing but the other who deconstructs myself in the artwork.

Since the assault, I become suppressed the expression of emotions, and along the way, I come to delegate most of the social role of face to belly. The pain that accumulates here is no longer an "unpleasant event", but a familiar home, and the belly becomes a reservoir of energy that accumulates as a social force. Which the artist or viewer may project their fears, desires, and dreams. My belly accepts these Diverse desires and fears.

To continue to question the whereabouts of the creaking body, my pain will continue to wander through the ages.

About The Artist

KAJITANI Ryo is a Japanese Artist, Researcher, Transgender art model. Asexual. The name as a model is REI. The artworks were based on decadent and dark painting style, and together with Zdzisław Beksiński(1929-2005) and TATSUSHIMA Yuko (1974-) used to be popular in Japan with the theme of "Words that should not be searched".

The work is characterized by multi-layered, delicate line drawings, and she majored in woodcut at university (2010-2014). In the doctoral program, which she entered to continue deepening studies in art, studied under the late MOTOE Kunio (art historian, 1948-2019), and NAKAMURA Yutaka (cultural anthropologist). She researched "the possibilities of German ontological aesthetics in exhibition spaces" from the viewpoint of an artist (2016-2019). In '19, she received her Ph.D. in Arts (Tama Art University), for the thesis "Towards Further Advancement of Artistic Activity in Exhibition Spaces: Exploring through the Ontological Aesthetics based on Heideggerʼs Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes".

After completing graduate school, she resumed acting as an art model. The shadowy unevenness of the body and the androgynous look are her characteristics.

Currently, she is working on prototypes of collage prints using the techniques learned from woodcut prints and is releasing her works on NFT marketplaces such as Rarible and Opensea. She also uses his own experience to support orphans and other people who wish to reintegrate into society.