In a span of eight art pieces. Kyun-chome invites the visitor to rediscover what breathing used to mean; to slow down, take it in, and breathe with the art
It was appropriate that there were about five dogs that settled themselves at the entrance of the UP Vargas Museum. Kyun-Chome, a Japanese art duo, had been holding their exhibit, All Living Things Are Breathing Now until August 30.
Appropriate, it was, since dogs inspired almost half of the artworks of the duo in this exhibit—a throwback to their stay in the coastal towns of the Visayas.
A clothesline as expression of time. A shell and a polished coin atop a sand as an investigation of beauty. A dark chamber where an underwater video plays—All Things Are Breathing Now is a contemporary expression through and through.
It is less of a loud scream on the importance of breathing, and more of a meditative reconnection with the simpler facets of living. And it is less of a presentation of what peace they found, but rather an invitation to find peace with them, all encapsulated in their art.
THE SEA NEAR THE RISING SUN
In 2011, a devastating earthquake threw Japan off-balance. A tsunami followed not long after, sweeping across the country, leaving nothing but total destruction at its wake.
Almost 20,000 people lost their lives. A nuclear accident took down the electrical grid and released high levels of radioactivity. Infrastructures that once stood mighty and strong became nothing more than concrete blocks scattered everywhere.
It was, without a doubt, one of Japan’s darkest memories.
It was this disastrous force of nature that mobilized Eri Homma and Nabuchi to begin their artistic endeavors as Kyun-chome.
To think that their artistic epicenter came from a disaster just eighty miles away from the coastal city of Sendai speaks volumes about the weight of the art they exhibited in the UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum, which prominently featured the monster that swept Japan: the unforgiving sea.
NEAR THE COAST OF THE ORIENT SEAS
“They lived in coastal towns in the Visayas. They were travelling around, living in those towns, and they immersed themselves,” said Professor Tessa Maria Guazon, curator at the UP Vargas Museum.
Considering the catastrophe that birthed their artistic work, it can be assumed that their display of the sea is similar to that of Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1831), one with raging terror, overwhelming, and beyond the scale of a human being.
This Japanese woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai is recognized as one of the most famous Japanese artwork worldwide, said to influence the works of Western artists like Van Gogh, Monet, and Debussy.
However, they do not seek to frame nature as a maligned being. They do not speak of it with hatred and utter unforgiveness.
What they ask of the spectator, instead, is to commune with nature and, hopefully, co-exist peacefully with it and within it.
“When they [Kyun-chome] went to the Philippines, they wanted to reshape their relationship with the ocean, the land, the nature, and with other living creatures,” said Corinne Garcia, the museum assistant at the UP Vargas Museum. “Which is also why they are bent more on survival and on slowing down, finding a slower pace of life, especially after disaster or catastrophe.”
Where one might see the terror from the shores, the waves undulating back and forth, Kyun-chome instead saw peace and beauty.
HERE COMES THE WARMTH
A healthy co-existence with nature and the recognition of the human person as only a part of a much larger whole speaks volumes in this exhibit.
“One day, I spent the whole day lying down and watching the sea,” Kyun-chome wrote. “When I picked up a stone from the beach, it was round and smooth, and it felt good. I picked it up and put it in my belly button, and it fit perfectly in my belly button.”
In one of their pieces titled Stone That Fits a Belly Button comes an act of physically connecting with nature in a way that is not usually done. Seven pebbles were lined up and above it is a colorful drawing, illustrating the very act of placing the stone on the belly button.
“The warmth of the stone, which had been warmed by the sun all day, came through my belly button, and I felt a strange feeling. As I took a deep breath in and out, the stone that had been embedded in my belly button gradually became accustomed to my body, and I felt like I had formed a special relationship with the earth,” he said.
The pebble, which found its rest on sandy shores under the stink of the sun, now rests on a person. What a strange feeling this must be. Kyun-chome felt this must have been attachment by proxy.
Is it not only a stone’s throw away from an interpretation that it rested on the very part that used to channel sustenance to any being while in the womb?
Does the kind warming of one’s tummy, in any way, evoke the sense of hominess, as if warmed up by one’s mother?
So perhaps that is what Kyun-chome felt: the earth sustaining another life by a gentle warming of a belly button.
And the exhibit is much about warmth as much as it is about breathing.
After all, do we not cup our breaths to warm our faces?
And this warmth is one they do not monopolize over, as if to say that this warmth is made for the human beings.
In whatever way they can, they lend it outwards, even to those who might not bear warmth the same way they do.
In a piece called Fluffy Fluffy, the duo took pictures of the dogs they encountered that sustained damages to their fur.
With a thread, they sew the parts of the pictures where the dog’s fur would have been, had they not been afflicted with injury or disease.
Kyun-chome wrote: “One day, I decided to stitch thread onto the bare spots, hoping that someday their fluffy fur would grow back again.”
ALL THINGS ARE LIVING NOW
Though this rock in which we live in moves around the sun at thirty kilometers every second, it does not seem to be in any hurry.
So why are we?
One might argue that it is because the Earth does not have a comprehensible mortality like we do. It has, one might say, no need to hurry.
Why do we need to hurry?
Because we have to continue surviving for the little time that we have, another might say.
However, Prof. Tessa Guazon said that Eri Homma—one of the duo—often used to tell her something about this.
“All survival is important and to live slowly is very important to us.”
Every little breath is a testament to our continued survival.
Kyun-chome asks, through all their art pieces, for us to slow down and realize in each of its passing, perhaps one of the most underrated evidence of our survival: our breath.
And that we are not the only livings capable of breathing.
The world does, too.
It is a testament to any being’s life, but how often do we realize our own breathing, let alone the breathing of everything else?
Often only when we’re running out of it—or when someone has none of it. However, when everything is calm in passing, it is least likely to be noticed.
A savage hunter does not think emphatically of a deer’s breath, not until it fires a gun and checks if it is still breathing.
Just as one does not usually think of the breath of a stray dog passing by. One often only sees the stray dog as a whole passing by, and not the breath that goes with it.
Kyun-chome wishes the viewer to pay attention to the life outside one’s own, reminding us that living is not a unique activity to humans, but one we share with nature.
“Much of it is about breathing. It’s about the breath and how it allows us to live. But it’s not just about the individual breathing. They are talking about a collective kind of existence—how do we breathe and co-exist, and help the planet thrive,” Prof. Guazon said.
The world runs so fast that breathing, which used to mean the specialness of life, had now turned to a matter-of-fact, a passive utility for the living.
But in the span of eight art pieces by Kyun-chome, a visitor could perhaps rediscover what breathing used to meant, if they would just allow themselves to slow down, take it in, and breathe with the art.
Perhaps the dogs that guard so kindly the entrance knew that what they were guarding were, in many ways, honoring their breathing and all acts of breathing.
For even the hush of trees that surrounded the museum and the waterdrops falling way up from a pipe all sounded like they were breathing, too.
UP Vargas Museum is located at the UP Diliman campus and hosts a variety of collection, most of which were donated by Jorge B. Vargas, a UP alumna.
Von Zyron Alimorong is a writer based in Makati. His works often dissect human nature, infusing narratives with introspection and existentialist thought. He studied Literature at the University of Santo Tomas and served as a Literary writer for The Flame. He is also the rhythm guitarist for the band COALESCENCE. He is currently a writer for Philippines Graphic.
