Solo Exhibition "Mountains of Bento Meals from Convenience Stores", CCC-the center for creative communications-, Shizuoka

Solo Exhibition "Mountains of Bento Meals from Convenience Stores" statement

We convert the quantity of bento meals from convenience stores that are disposed daily; an average of 30 bento meals per store is observed to be disposed. For example, this amounts to a cost of 255 million yen for 510, 000 meals, assuming 17, 000 Seven-Eleven stores. This amount is lost by each convenience store company branch, 365 days a year. Therefore, it is a simple idea: if we collect these discarded convenience store bento meals and pile them up, they will form a mountain. Of course, we do not actually see such a mountain in reality; however, this series expresses the work which surely embodies the heap of existing convenience stores’ bento meals in Japan. I believe this mountain to be sacred. From the Japanese religion perspective, which finds a god in a rice grain, naturally gods live in rice, fried chicken, omelet, spaghetti, and pickle. And there are gods to one one. In the end, it seems natural that a myriad of gods live in that mountain. Thus, it should be called a sacred mountain. But these gods are disposable, and sometimes they die with the food’s expiry date. And they might be reborn anywhere. Or they are powerless and deserve to be thrown away and slaughtered. However, in the first place, when considering the problems involved, no gods should be here. We are being asked these questions when confronted by the bento meal mountains; in short, these are modern religious paintings.