Social Layer – The Comfort of Silence

Between people, there are so many things we cannot see.

Words, expressions, a sense of distance.
The environment and culture we grew up in, the experiences we have had.
Even when we are in the same place, looking at the same thing, what we feel is surely different.

Lately, I often find myself thinking about what lies “between people.”

Being close to someone does not mean you can understand everything about them.

In fact, sometimes it is precisely because we are close that we leave things unsaid.

Time spent together without saying anything.
Things we seem to understand but actually don’t.
Feelings that shift slightly once put into words.

These are the things that interest me.

“Social Layer – The Comfort of Silence” is a body of work that reflects on these layers between people.

We may seem to live alone, but in reality we exist within many relationships.

Family, friends, partners, work, society.

Within them, we ourselves gradually change.

There is a self that emerges when we are with someone, and a self that appears only when we are alone.

Seen this way, perhaps the “self” is not a single sheet either.

It is made of many overlapping experiences, memories, and relationships.

Layer。

I chose this word because I was conscious of that overlapping.

But this time, what interested me was not only what overlaps.

It was what lies in between.

Between people.
Between myself and others.
Between understanding and misunderstanding.

There are things there that cannot be clearly named.

For a long time, I have made works about borders.

Nature and the artificial.
Myself and others.
Japan and abroad.
Reality and memory.

But lately, I have become more drawn to what lies “between” those borders than to the borders themselves.

A border looks like a line that divides things.

Yet on that line there are moments and emotions that belong to neither side.

It is a somewhat ambiguous, unsettled place.

At the same time, it also seems to be a place of freedom.

I named it “The Comfort of Silence” because I did not want to see silence simply as loneliness or distance.

You don’t have to say anything.

You don’t have to force an explanation.

You can be together without understanding everything about the other person.

In such moments, there is a sense of ease different from words.

Even when I take photographs, I don’t always want to explain everything.

Within what is shown, there is something not shown.

I hope viewers will fill that open space with their own experiences.

Rather than handing over an answer, “This is what it means,”

“What did I feel?”

I would rather have people pause and ask themselves that; it feels more right to me now.

People can never fully understand one another.

Perhaps that is only natural.

But we can be together even without understanding.

We don’t have to force that distance closed.

Perhaps the very silence found there is what we need to keep our relationships going.

Social Layer。

I want to think a little more about those invisible layers.