The exhibition I investigated was an exhibition of Araki’s photography. After the visit, I organized the photos I took into three parts, namely flowers, women and calligraphy works. Araki’s flowers are brightly coloured, with some petals covered in oil paint, and focus on the stamens, the reproductive organs of the flowers. The women in Araki’s photographs wear Japanese clothing, such as kimonos and robes, with large areas of skin exposed. Some of the women were tied up with twine. Their faces were mostly expressionless. The overall tone of the picture is dark, is taken with a Polilai camera. Araki’s calligraphy is mainly composed of ancient Chinese poems and Buddhist sutras. His handwriting is not good in the traditional sense, and some of it is crooked. But it’s very personal.
I also looked up a lot of information about Araki on the Internet, and I learned that araki’s works are filled with “sex” in the visual sense. The reason why he often contains sexual elements in his works is that The Araki house stood directly opposite Jōkanji temple. This was known as a Nagekomi-dera (throw in temple) because the Araki house stood opposite Jōkanji temple During the Edo period (1603 — 1868) the body of prostitutes from the Yoshiwara Courtesan district with no family to Claim them had been dumped in the temple grounds. It became Araki’s childhood playground. In later years, He would dub the basis of his photography “Erotos.” The word is a classic Araki racing, combining the Eros of sex and life with Thanatos, The embodiment of death. We could even say that the essence of Araki’s talent, slipping effortlessly between the worlds of the living and the dead, lies rooted in the soil where he was born and grew up. And the Japanese worship of sex is quite frank, in their view, fervent love and sexual expression is not restricted by moral ideas, is entirely due to beauty itself.
A wonderfully bizarre prop that Araki often utilizes are dried, brittle lizards. These form a striking contrast to the lush flowers upon which they are placed and can be interpreted in so many different ways within the cruel but beautiful sphere of life. They are also a quintessential illustration of his mono no aware aesthetic, loosely defined as the wistful acknowledgment of the transience of things.
He ingeniously uses dolls and other figurines along with scattered flowers and plants to form lively, if not slightly macabre scenes. The dolls especially have the effect of adding a level of innocence or creepiness, depending on your view.
I used heat-shrinkable sheets to simulate the flowers in Araki’s photo when I made the shoes. The heat shrinkable sheets were coated with oil paint. Since some of the flowers araki photographed were bouquets, I used wire, wool and cloth to made a combination of flowers with different textures. I also used the binding element in my shoes. But the first shoe that I made, although it looked good, couldn’t be saved because I made it directly on my feet. When I finished, I realized that if I took the shoe off, it would fall apart. So I made a second pair of shoes, this time trying to make them into a clog, because Araki’s father was a clog-maker and clogs often appear in his photographs. The soles of the clogs are made from discarded delivery boxes and foam boards. I decorated the soles with flowers I made from fabric and heat shrinkable sheets. There is no decoration on the upper, which shows the instep of my foot. The shoes were so successful that I used them for my Media Session.