A few years ago, Tamaki Yoshida, who had loved animals since she was a child, visited her mother’s birthplace in Hokkaido for the first time. Taken aback by the abundance of nature, and “the spring in the back garden with water so clear that salamanders spawned in it,” she started thinking about how human activity threatens the richness of nature. One day, a darkroom mistake resulted in a deer in a photograph she was developing being ‘devoured by chemistry.’ This accident caused Yoshida to become aware of the possibility that wastewater from her daily life might flow from one place to another until it ended up contaminating the water of faraway Hokkaido. Inspired by this revelation, she began grappling with the interaction between chemical substances and ecosystems through the unique and delicate method of developing film using mixtures of common chemical products such as detergents, polishing agents, and toothpaste. Forcing us to face our relationship with nature, Yoshida underlines, with poetry, our quintessential role in saving it and the animal kingdom.
With this exhibition, Yoshida wanted to reflect the circulation of water: the flow of wastewater from human society back into nature. Her work brings us all face-to-face with our relationship with nature: it is the poetic expression of an urgent plea,and a powerful message to humankind - that saving the environment is saving ourselves.