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Expired, Kerry Mansfield

Rinko Kawauchi, Ametsuchi series (2012-2013)

What inspired me was a dream I had one day. It was of scenery so amazingly beautiful that it made me almost scared. I woke up thinking how beautiful it was. I wasn’t sure if that location really existed, but if it did, I wanted to visit it. About six months later, I saw what I saw in my dream on TV. The location did exist. I found out that was I saw was called noyaki. It is the practice of protecting a grassland by burning a field. It has been done for about thirteen hundred years. Without noyaki, a field would turn into woods. Beautiful grassland cannot be maintained without burning the field once a year. What amazes me is that it doesn’t happen naturally but is maintained by human intervention. I am very much interested in the flow and cycle of human practices. It is not only the theme for Ametsuchi but also a foundation of all my work.