2019, 2025 - ongoing
MYTH OF A MANMADE SUN
Unique c-print photograms (paper cutout, sunlight, artist's breath), wooden frame
Myth of a Manmade Sun #1 - #5
38 × 26 × 4 in. each
When I was a child, I made paper cut-out collages for my grandfather, who encouraged my creativity before passing away from cancer. That loss tethered my understanding of nuclear history to the slow, invisible violence it leaves behind, shaping both my artistic language and my sense of inherited responsibility.
In Myth of a Manmade Sun, these memories transform into ritual acts that double as long-term nuclear waste warning signs—messages intended to endure for millennia, yet impossible to fully convey. The paper cut-outs, echoes of my childhood gestures, are laid onto light-sensitive photographic paper and exposed to the sun, their silhouettes burned into the surface like shadows after an explosion. Cut, layered, and assembled into architectural and organic forms, they recall memorials, ruins, and markers meant to deter the future from repeating the past.
Scratched lines vibrate across some surfaces like seismic pulses, registering both the instant of catastrophe and its endless aftershocks. Yet the fragility of the paper underscores the futility of permanence, turning these “signs” into contemplative performances—objects that warn but also meditate on the impossibility of fully translating danger across time.
Part elegy, part cautionary beacon, the work stands in the space between permanence and erasure, bearing witness to what cannot be forgotten while acknowledging the limits of how we can remember.
2019, 2025 - ongoing
MYTH OF A MANMADE SUN
Unique c-print photograms (paper cutout, sunlight, artist's breath), wooden frame
Myth of a Manmade Sun #1 - #5
38 × 26 × 4 in. each
When I was a child, I made paper cut-out collages for my grandfather, who encouraged my creativity before passing away from cancer. That loss tethered my understanding of nuclear history to the slow, invisible violence it leaves behind, shaping both my artistic language and my sense of inherited responsibility.
In Myth of a Manmade Sun, these memories transform into ritual acts that double as long-term nuclear waste warning signs—messages intended to endure for millennia, yet impossible to fully convey. The paper cut-outs, echoes of my childhood gestures, are laid onto light-sensitive photographic paper and exposed to the sun, their silhouettes burned into the surface like shadows after an explosion. Cut, layered, and assembled into architectural and organic forms, they recall memorials, ruins, and markers meant to deter the future from repeating the past.
Scratched lines vibrate across some surfaces like seismic pulses, registering both the instant of catastrophe and its endless aftershocks. Yet the fragility of the paper underscores the futility of permanence, turning these “signs” into contemplative performances—objects that warn but also meditate on the impossibility of fully translating danger across time.
Part elegy, part cautionary beacon, the work stands in the space between permanence and erasure, bearing witness to what cannot be forgotten while acknowledging the limits of how we can remember.
© 2023 by Kei Ito.
Created on Editor X.
Sungazing
2015 - Ongoing
108 of 8”x10” prints, Scroll: 12” x 150’ to 220’ depending on the edition
On August 6th 1945, at 8:15 AM, my grandfather witnessed a great tragedy that destroyed nearly everything in Hiroshima. He survived the bombing, yet he lost many of his family members from the explosion and radiation poisoning. As an activist and author, my grandfather fought against the use of nuclear weaponry throughout his life, until he too passed away from cancer when I was ten years old. I remember him saying that day in Hiroshima was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky.
In order to express the connection between the sun and my family history, I have created 108 letter size prints and a 200 foot long scroll, made by exposing Type-C photographic paper to sunlight. The pattern on the prints/scroll corresponds to my breath. In a darkened room, I pulled the paper in front of a small aperture to expose it to the sun while inhaling, and paused when exhaling. I repeated this action until I breathed 108 times. 108 is a number with ritual significance in Japanese Buddhism; to mark the Japanese New Year, bells toll 108 times, ridding us of our evil passions and desires, and purifying our souls.
If the black parts of the print remind you of a shadow, it is the shadow of my breath, which is itself a registration of my life, a life I share with and owe to my grandfather. The mark of the atomic blast upon his life and upon his breath was passed on to me, and you can see it as the shadow of this print.