きどあいらく KIDOAIRAKU – かんかん – F*CK

The Japanese have sayings for just about everything under the sun.

For a foreigner, the language’s idioms are like a premier league linguistic sport. Whatever the emotion – disappointment, enthusiasm, or a feeling of displacement – there’s a corresponding saying or special idiom in Japanese, often a short, almost slangy exclamation. The constant oh’s, ah’s, eh’s and soh’s sound so musical to the foreign ear, a dynamic orchestra of idiom. As an artist, this made an impression on me: I, too, love to work with short, catchy words.

The art works in the series ‘きどあいらく KIDOAIRAKU’ have been inspired by origami, fragile works of folded paper. I took pages from old books and screen printed letters forming particular idioms onto them. I’ve created an abstract pattern by folding and arranging the printed pages onto a large surface.