Visiting Naoshima that is. An island dedicated to art. Gotta be good, right?
After checking into Sparky’s House, we set out to walk a pleasant 25 minutes from Sparky’s to the village of Honmura where several abandoned homes have been repurposed as contemporary art spaces.
Grubb will describe the installations in more descriptive prose but let me pause for a mention about abandoned houses. Japanese people don’t buy used houses. What? For us Americans, that does not compute. In Japan, homes are kept in families for generations. Traditionally, the eldest son inherits. If kids opt out in order to move away or there are no kids, the home is abandoned when the parents die and either stands abandoned for decades or is eventually demolished.
The first abandoned home art project we stopped in did have something that fascinated me (besides a giant Statue of Liberty sculpture jutting up through two floors) and it’s another puzzle if anyone has an explanation.
Pictures below. A glass, or possibly acrylic panel. If you zoom in you can tell it’s a window. Parts of the numbers appear and disappear. There are no flaps or anything mechanical. Just all of a sudden, a part will switch from clear to opaque and vice versa.
