Shinchu 身中 or Anal Fissure at Tadao Ando's Chichu
The Study
This study originates from a trip to Naoshima, Japan in 2017. Naoshima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea, is home to a number of museums including the Chichu Museum built by Tadao Ando. Chichu (地中) means "in the earth"; the structure exists wholly underground except for a number of geometric windows visible from above.
I developed a horrible anal fissure prior to my departure to Japan that made my experience in Naoshima indescribably painful. The goal of this study was to filter the experience of my anal fissure, realized as photos from a subsequent colonoscopy, through the parallel experience of Tadao Ando's structure.
Chichu from above.
The Process
I first realized the sunken motif using the geometric negatives in the Chichu, rendered in a negative and positive.
Next, I created a simple collage of photos from my colonoscopy based on Chichu's topology.
The next step was to produce a fleshed out collage (no pun intended) centered on the previous iteration. This collage was then turned to grayscale and separated by darkness into 13 layers.
The layers were then individually manipulated as the original rendering of the Chichu negative geometric spaces.
Each image was layered in a single document and restrained with a clipping mask using the respective original grayscale layer.
The Final Product
This final piece realizes the sunken motif gleaned from the architecture of the Chichu and contextualizes it within the pain of my anal fissure; this same pain which deluded my first-hand experience with the Chichu and Naoshima at large. The individual images become amorphous as they share grays with their neighbors. The sinking effect, applied to even the smallest area, becomes inescapable while simultaneously obscuring the larger subject.