MAM Collection 017: Sawa Hiraki

Inspired by a strong and enduring interest in depth psychology, dreams, and the realm of memory, Hiraki Sawa (born 1977 in Ishikawa, Japan, currently based in London) produces videos interweaving the real and fictitious that have been presented at exhibitions around the world. Installation composed of elaborate multi-screen arrangements showing multiple videos offers a mesmerizing visual experience that also makes the viewer conscious of their own physicality, and expresses rich interior worlds where memory, emotion, and sensation converge.

MAM Collection 017 presents Sawa’s six-channel video installation Hako (2007). The title Hako, meaning “box,” has its origins in the psychotherapy technique of sand play. In sand play therapy, the patient arranges toys and miniature objects in a sandbox to create a three-dimensional version of the mental state they are unable to express verbally, the aim being to enhance the self-healing powers present in the unconscious.

Here videos including images of a room with hints of human presence, a Ferris wheel at the beach, fireworks lighting up the night sky at a harbor, and a shrine sitting deep in a forest are projected on upright screens. Accompanied by a soundtrack that feels at once somehow familiar, images locked away in the depths of people’s memories play in synchronized fashion, merging into a single scene.

MAM Collection 017 presents a version reconfigured to underscore the worldview of the sand play therapy that originally inspired the work. Hako is also joined here by a drawing of a dream-eating sheep, and the video work featuring superimposed afterimages of a dancer. The resonance between these different works entices viewers into a landscape where unconscious and conscious, dream and reality intersect.