Horseshoe, AIRspace Projects
Harrison Rae + Maira Shimada
“Horseshoe presents work by Harrison Rae and Maira Shimada that reflect on collapse as a destructive and generative force. Through archival reproduction and acts of deconstruction, their practices pull intimacies out of the mundane and structurally unsound.”
Green replica of my imagination / genkan (2025)
Crayon frottage on rice paper, tape. 260x165 cm.
Originally exhibited in Tokyo at HoiPoi Kōenji for “Circling Threads”, August 2025.
This is a crayon imprint on rice paper of my grandmother’s genkan (entranceway) in west Tokyo. A passage my family has walked through for 60 years. These are our shoes and umbrellas. It is scheduled for demolition by local council, some day in the next years. I keep picturing the demolition ball rocking in the sky and smashing it to a million pieces of 1960s concrete.
I have a bad memory; I mean, I think my memories go to live in the same place as my imagination (for better or for worse). Making an imprint with paper and crayon is the most intimate replica I can get of things. The paper is physically intimate with the place/object, and takes on its textures. We retain shapes, but lose colour and images – for example, a photograph when imprinted becomes nothing more than a rectangle. 3D becomes 2D.
Crayon frottage on rice paper, tape. 260x165 cm.
Originally exhibited in Tokyo at HoiPoi Kōenji for “Circling Threads”, August 2025.
This is a crayon imprint on rice paper of my grandmother’s genkan (entranceway) in west Tokyo. A passage my family has walked through for 60 years. These are our shoes and umbrellas. It is scheduled for demolition by local council, some day in the next years. I keep picturing the demolition ball rocking in the sky and smashing it to a million pieces of 1960s concrete.
I have a bad memory; I mean, I think my memories go to live in the same place as my imagination (for better or for worse). Making an imprint with paper and crayon is the most intimate replica I can get of things. The paper is physically intimate with the place/object, and takes on its textures. We retain shapes, but lose colour and images – for example, a photograph when imprinted becomes nothing more than a rectangle. 3D becomes 2D.
The first phase of exhibiting this work happened in Tokyo - it was installed on the floor of the gallery at its entrance, and I invited attendees to use it like a real genkan; please take of your shoes here to enter the gallery. In Japanese culture, stepping on something is a really degrading thing to do, a kind of compulsion that’s probably leftover from feudal times. So stepping on the work was very intimate – one is confronted, one wants to be careful, the paper is fragile and will tear, the crayon will warp. This was the artwork’s natural devolution as it took on the physical memory of their shoes and feet.
By the time I brought the work to Eora it was pretty fragile, full of long tears with a sheen of dirt in the pattern of the tatami floor of the original gallery. This time we installed it floating on the wall. It was extremely structurully unsound, the damage all there to sniff and inspect, and that waxy crayon stench still hanging around.
By the time I brought the work to Eora it was pretty fragile, full of long tears with a sheen of dirt in the pattern of the tatami floor of the original gallery. This time we installed it floating on the wall. It was extremely structurully unsound, the damage all there to sniff and inspect, and that waxy crayon stench still hanging around.
Some kind of calendar (2025)
Ink on twelve red napkins. 33x33cm each.
Ink on twelve red napkins. 33x33cm each.
I will write about this soon when I’ve worked out how to write about it.
