Chika Annen: Meta-Playground

25th November – 18th December

Free Entry

“Through the pandemic, people have more access to the virtual field which is the new playground of metaphysical materials.


The vast ocean of overflowed information provides a unique association with different images and subjects. It applies multi-layered materiality to subjective contexts. The repetition of materialization and dematerialization recalls me of the primitive activity to earn and update one’s information of a certain object through touch, smell, sight, and taste.

I am fascinated with the ironic and contradicting interpretation of the idea of “humanity” and “animality” after the technological innovation. As coming from Japan where the idea of “life/spirit” is associated to everything. I feel a mutual sense of “life” within all living things. I suppose the essence of barbarousness is strangeness(otherness) when the rational presence encounters the alien existence.

The exhibition reflects the contemporary identification of “animality” surrounding our ordinary world. The playful visual/physical representation based on Japanese and English languages draw meta-linguistic materiality. “Wani Ouroboros” comes from Japanese classic dialect word “Wani” which means both “Alligators” and “Sharks”. The blending images of the ferocious and mystical animals resonate with our universal projections of the idea of “Beast”.

As a drifter of the playground, and of bi-cultural/linguistic library, I collected verbal and visual fragments of mythical subject around me and reconstructed the contemporary meta-myths of “animal” to explore the inherent nature in human: savage and pure existence.”