Works

Looking at houses with gardens, I began to wonder if a garden could be seen as a kind of “empty space.” If we think of the buildings where people live as masses with a substantial physical presence, the space within the linear boundaries of walls or fences that is not occupied by the building can be understood as a void. From this perspective, a garden is not simply an empty space, but a space that gains meaning through its relationship with the mass of the building. I wanted to express this relationship between mass and void through a teapot. The teapot is filled when tea is poured into it and becomes empty again when the tea is poured out. This repeated process of “filling and emptying” resembles the nature of the void found in a garden. An empty space is not simply a state in which nothing exists, but a space capable of holding something new. In this sense, I saw the teapot as an appropriate medium for connecting the idea of the garden’s “void” with the act of drinking tea. I wanted to visually express this idea through the handle of the teapot. I viewed the space formed within the handle as the void of the garden and added an element to be observed, as if planting a tree within that empty space. The space inside the handle is not simply an empty area, but is intended to become a space through which the viewer can see and encounter something new.