Kyoko Ebata

Get to know SqW:Lab 2020 fellows – today we speak to artist, Kyoko Ebata.

Washing Hinomaru, Kyoko Ebata, performance, 2013 – 

Where can you be found?

Tokyo.

Tell us about a creative action you have taken this week.

Gardening.

What does ‘home’ mean to you? 

Somewhere I feel comfortable to rest.

What was the last thing you drew?

A circle.

Tell us about 2 of your most subtle influences.

Please share your thoughts / a few words about your expectations of the SqW:Lab fellowship, of being in Mumbai and the project in total.

A couple of years ago, I went to see a show with an artist who makes a painting costs as much as a Porsche. His paintings are fantastic. I enjoyed talking about paintings so much so that he offered me to become his assistant. I came home and really wanted to paint something and bought a beautiful sketchbook. I drew a red circle with watercolour. But I didn’t know what to do next. It was already perfect and couldn’t find any reason to go on and add something else.

I have been making digital works or documentation of some kind of performance for a long time. It is souvenir collecting, name giving, moment remembering, memory sharing, scape discovering, prize acquiring, enemy conquering, spirit stealing and living and loving, what I did. Never really initiated anything unless it was necessary to do. Usually curiosity, obligation, love or anger make me do things. I didn’t know what to do with the circle I just drew.

I do enjoy being responsive to what’s there in front of me. I am hoping to find a reason, motivation or emotion to draw something, or simply a way to draw. Is it for happiness or for survival? Can it ever be curious like the other’s painting?

Goto, a Japanese man, one of the organisers told me that the distance between people are much closer in India. I wonder what does it mean. Is it more than the crowded train in Tokyo?