Strange Home Japan
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Research/ future work
I grew up in a traditional Japanese house, set in Belgium. In the early 1990's, my father, an antique dealer of Japanese art, transformed a decayed farmhouse near Brussels into a Japanese dwelling, surrounded by a Japanese garden. He meticulously followed architectural traditions—adhering to scale, dimension, color, and material. This unique space profoundly shaped my artistic perception, awareness of architecture, light, and the relationship between culture, objects, nature, and human presence.
The notion of “Strange Home” encapsulates a dual tension: the Western fascination with Japan as an exoticized aesthetic ideal versus my own intimate, affective relationship to it. This research will critically examine how projections, historical narratives, and memory intersect—questioning authenticity, inheritance, and cultural transmission.
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Research/ future work
I grew up in a traditional Japanese house, set in Belgium. In the early 1990's, my father, an antique dealer of Japanese art, transformed a decayed farmhouse near Brussels into a Japanese dwelling, surrounded by a Japanese garden. He meticulously followed architectural traditions—adhering to scale, dimension, color, and material. This unique space profoundly shaped my artistic perception, awareness of architecture, light, and the relationship between culture, objects, nature, and human presence.
The notion of “Strange Home” encapsulates a dual tension: the Western fascination with Japan as an exoticized aesthetic ideal versus my own intimate, affective relationship to it. This research will critically examine how projections, historical narratives, and memory intersect—questioning authenticity, inheritance, and cultural transmission.
