Risako Yamanoi

/ Näyttelyt /

A box for

I found a box. This box, made of thick cardboard, was something provided by the school to the students to keep inside the school desk drawer. We used the same box from first to sixth grade. Students were supposed to keep ”school essentials” in this box: colored pencils, crayons, glue sticks, scissors, and so on.

However, most of the time, the box turned into a ”whatever-items box” where you put various things just for the time being. And then, you would forget about the things you put inside. What happens after is that, when organizing the contents of the box at the end of the school year, you receive ”surprise gifts” from the past: notes secretly passed around between friends, a letter to parents from school that you completely forgot about, a piece of bread that you couldn’t finish during lunchtime. (Fortunately, I’ve never had moldy bread in my box.)

Forrest Gump (and his mother) said that life is like a box of chocolates. But for me, life starts with an empty box.

I put everything in this box: small things, important things, things so terrifying that I don’t want to see, things with unknown purposes. Before I know it, the box turns into a book with stories, or sometimes a strange abstract painting or a map of an unfamiliar place. However, when I try to look closely, it turns back into just a box filled with clutter.

The exhibition “A box for” consists of a series of prints and drawings. The works in this exhibition are created based on observing the past not as something old and fixed, but as something continuously rediscovered from the present. While these works speak about the meanings of the past being constantly put on hold and redefined in order to construct a sensible narrative of life, they also speak of the fundamental meaninglessness of every event and their independent existence from any interpretation.

Risako Yamanoi

Risako Yamanoi is a Helsinki-based visual artist who mainly works with printmaking, installation, and publication. She has completed her master’s degree in printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. Her interest lies in people’s personal storytelling. Through her practice, she observes how we construct personal narratives with memories and objects around us.

The exhibition has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Risako Yamanoi: Unfold, 2022, lyijykynä paperille, 56 x 76 cm

kuvat/photography: Aukusti Heinonen