Shibaura Daydream

Nachara Solo Exhibition “Shibaura Daydream”

Venue: Bread, Espresso & Shibaura Gallery
Address: 1F, 4-9-13 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023, Japan
Hours: 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM (Last order 5:30 PM)
Closed: Open daily (no regular closing days)
Tel: 03-6435-3375

Access: 10-minute walk from JR Tamachi Station
Admission: Free (food and drinks are charged separately)

━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━

Exhibition Statement

My distance from Shibaura is both close and far.
It shouldn’t be that far from my home, and yet, without a driver’s license, the only way for me to get there is to take the train and make a long detour. I always think, “At this rate, I could end up at Haneda Airport.”

About four years ago, I used to travel to Shibaura diligently to earn a boat license. At the last possible minute, I’d run the 13-minute stretch from the station to the training school, barely avoiding being late. For some reason, Shibaura was almost always sunny. Sunlight flashed off the polished windows of rows of office buildings, and tall, white, rectangular walls drew straight lines through the streets. And in that bright, inorganic city, air laced with sea breeze—so out of place it felt poured in afterward—would brush my cheeks as I ran. The presence of the sea, unseen.

As I walked, letting my mind sink into those memories, I realized I had arrived at Pan to Espresso to before I knew it. I ordered a salted bread roll and a café latte and sat down. In the relief of finally being able to rest, I looked up—and there it was: a gigantic pink snow mountain towering before me. Outside the window, in the narrow gap between buildings, an impossibly large mountain seemed to surge closer. Without my noticing, an invisible mountain had come right up to the edge of my world.

A small moth flitted past my ear, slipped through the window, and in an instant shot straight toward the snow mountain. Moths gathered from who-knows-where, gently stroking the pink ridgeline with their flight. When I looked closely, I could see tiny goats dancing across the rugged surface.

Shibaura felt as though a vast, transparent device for seeing daydreams had been installed underground. The salted bread and café latte were its switch. Moments of daydream are hidden within Shibaura. That is how I have come to accept Tokyo.

━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━ ━

Nachara

Painter. Born and raised in urban Tokyo.
Since childhood, she has held a strong fascination with insects and plants living in the city, repeatedly experiencing the loss of familiar and beloved places as they were transformed into buildings and parking lots. These experiences of disappearance within the rapidly changing urban environment form the foundation of her artistic practice.

During university, she belonged to a research laboratory in the field of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), where she conducted research on the conservation of biodiversity in urban settings. After graduating, she began working primarily in painting.

One of her main painting series, RANDOM SCENES, features 16:9-ratio canvases depicting imagery inspired by insects and plants. Over these images, she paints subtitles sampled from existing video works, thereby creating fictional “scenes” that do not actually exist.