About the artwork

Snow in Tsumari is deep. Snow around Tokyo turns the normal scenery into a white monochrome, but here in Tsumari, the snow has the power to change the very topograghy. The road that one had walked down without giving it a thought becomes impassable because of the snow. Suddenly a snow mountain appears in an empty lot. In Tokamachi space is left between houses for the snow which is removed from the rooftops. These spaces were connected by nets hung between the eaves of the houses, giving rise to a new summertime topographical feature suggestive of houses buried in snow. Entering at random any of the seven houses in a row and the “private” spaces between houses gives rise to exchanges between visitors and the people who live in the houses. Daily life and the relations between neighbors threre are interwoven in a topography different from the usual one in summer, and normally unnoticed empty spaces in town are turned into places that give a glimpse of the real daily life of Tokamachi.