“The Unfinished: Making of a Modern tea-room”
Site Installation, 2017
I was inspired by modern architects and artists like Shigeru Ban and David Mastalka creating contemporary tea houses. I decided to do a site-specific installation, because it further emphasizes the ephemeral nature of the teahouse and create a space using of simple ideas, materials, and method.
I used about 2,370 ft of twine, around 200 pebbles and 40 bells. In deciding which materials to use, I searched for the kind of simplicity that embodied the wabi-style. Essentially a tea-room is just a space where certain actions occur (a tea ceremony or light conversation between the host and the guest) and where certain thoughts take place (synergy between the guest and the interior of the tea room). The straight line that the twine creates is reminiscent of natural forms like branches or bamboo, while effectively denoting a change in space. In regard to the pebbles--what material is as humble and unpretentious as a rock on the side of the road? It was fascinating to the see that something insignificant that one might pass by unnoticed, covered from view by dirt, leaves, and other debris can be transformed into the one of the centerpieces of this work, basically acting as a scroll or a decoration in a tokonoma would.
These two materials: twine and pebbles, deliberately reference nature. They also makes the visual engagement of the viewer alternate between seeing this tea-room as a organic being-- something could have been created by chance by nature, and seeing the tea room as a highly planned and artificially made space by aspects that are obviously created by a human’s hand, such as the twine wrapped around the pebble to create a knot.
The bells were used to introduce an auditory aspect into the piece. A sound of a bell has many associations to sounds in nature--especially water--that the human mind immediately connects to, such as tinkling of a small stream, or a gentle rain. Traditionally in religions such as Islam and Buddhism, bells has been used to call to focus inwards and reflect upon self-existing awareness. I wanted to reference all the preexisting association with the bell and focus that into the idea of the roji, which is a vital part a tea house.