MIDORI MITAMURA

  A mysterious woman is sitting on a stage inside a small room all day. Visitors call her with a bell at the counter and show her a ticket. Then she inflates a blue balloon inside of the room and hands it to them without smiling or speaking. She looks like she is being controlled and lacks freedom. An attached card is asking the visitor to release a balloon somewhere outside. The balloons symbolize freedom. From the roof of the stage, everyday objects fall down one by one, like one water drop every thirty seconds. The falling objects evoke gravity which we cannot escape. The woman looks like a metaphor of a totalitarianism society without freedom. However, she also doesn’t need to smile like a capitalist society that restricts people by time and money. This work raises awareness of an issue to think about "What is freedom ? " among our various societies; capitalism and socialism, wealth and poverty, male and female, and many different gaps.
Just before making this work, 2 close female friends of mine sadly passed away.  One friend who died of cancer was aware of her remaining life and spent it as free as possible. And another who died of SAH was a sudden death in a quarter of an hour while not knowing her life was going to end so abruptly. Their contrastive deaths raised a question to me. Which death is freer?  What is freedom?