Vol.09
2008.CHIE HITOTSUYAMA in AFRICA |
Towards the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), environmental issues or poverty problems in Africa have been recently featured in many articles. This spring, I was fortunate to have an opportunity to travel to Africa and make a presentation based on this experience. Chie Hitotsuyama’s 4th exhibition titled, “AFRICA” as “Chien X CA4LA” vol4, is being held until the end of May at “test,” a flag shop of popular hat brand “CA4LA.” Please take a look at some scenes of the exhibition at the following. |
I have been drawing people of various ethnic backgrounds, without paying extra attention to Africa. As a matter of fact, I drew a picture of many ethnic groups gathered together for T-shirts of Uniqlo brand in 2006 and received the Special Judge’s Award. I care so much about depicting communities around the world, not just of Africa.   |
Africa…Being such an artist, I had a chance to visit a village in Africa.We visited a village called “Fiwale” in Copperbelt Province in Zambia. We flew from Johannesburg in South Africa to Lusaka, then we drove about 4 hours to a town called Ndola. It was a long tiring journey. |
In order to get to the village, it took another 1 hour from the hotel that we stayed. When we were driving on the one and only road to the copperbelt (copper mines) in pitch dark, a huge orange moon that I had never seen welcomed us.  |
 The African sky was so blue and so wide. Without such objects like abundant neon lights of advertisements on buildings, the color of the sky, sun, sunset light, colors of flowers, the color of the earth, red and orangy soil, brilliance of stars floating in the night sky, the color of the moon, and the colors of nature were so much appealing to our eyes. The ethnic costume called “chilende” that the local people wore displayed its brilliant colors reflecting on the sun. Looking at the people walking in the wilderness made me think how small human beings were. Although it may sound nothing unusual, I was reassured that humans and nature lived together and we, humans, were let live in the huge nature of the earth. I also felt that living |
