Torayan’s Ark Project [2011]
Navigation Toward Tomorrows
For the exhibition Munasawagi no Natsuyasumi (The Presage in Summer Vacation) held Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art (2010), Kenji Yanobe created an installation work with his previous works such as Lucky Dragon and Torayan. In the collection, the museum has serial works Lucky Dragon by Ben Shahn, the drawings of Daigo Fukuryu Maru (also known as Lucky Dragon 5), a Japanese tuna fishing boat, which was exposed to and contaminated by nuclear fallout from the United States’ thermonuclear device test on Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Yanobe included Lucky Dragon Concept Maquette for the installation. The model was made for the preparation of Suito Osaka–Aqua Metropolis Osaka–2009 and it resembled with the shape of Daigo Fukuryu Maru. Also, in the picture book The Great Adventure of Torayan, there is a scene with a ship which resembles Daigo Fukuryu Maru.
In the story, melted ice caused a great flood and Torayan and his friends strive to build a ship to escape from the sinking land and set for a voyage together. The story has a close resemblance to Noah’s ark in Old Testament. In the 1990’s, Yanobe made a series of works which would serve as shelters. Noah’s ark had been one of his enduring Leitmotiv, and with the encountering of Daigo Fukuryu Maru, he has become more conscious of Noah’s ark.
In April of 2011, Lucky Dragon Concept Maquette was installed in the permanent collection room of Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, which reopened after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Torayan’s Ark Project was launched with the suggestions from the staffs of museum. The project was aimed to collect dolls and stuffed toys from all over Japan and put them on Lucky Dragon Concept Maquette, which was compared to Noah’s Ark. In August of 2011, the interior space of museum was opened as children’s playground and series of workshops and events Aso VIVA! (Play-Ground!) were taken place. Because of nuclear fallout contamination, children had been encouraged to play inside of buildings and the museum
offered its space for children. Yanobe had a workshop, Torayan’s Great Flying Ark Project, in which children tied bright yellow balloons to 180 dolls and stuffed toys collected for Torayan’s Ark Project.
Many balloons with toys floated in the hall of museum and children were overjoyed with the sight that their toys, in a sense their own other selves, were floating high. The workshop were full of festivity and hope. Yanobe made this workshop as a larger version of Cinema in the Wood, which had been made as a shelter for children. In this sense, this work shop would be regarded as “The Museum in
the Wood”. During the same period of this project, Yanobe was making Sun Child and he brought Sun Child Concept Maquette to Fukushima, and put it on the stem of Lucky Dragon Concept Maquette. Thus by he showed his hope for restoration of Fukushima.
In 2012, Torayan’s Great Flying Ark Project was installed at Art Tower Mito for the exhibition Artists and the Disaster–Documentation in Progress–. At Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall, he had an exhibition From Daigo Fukuryu Maru to Lucky Dragon and he exhibited Sun Child outside of the hall and installed Torayan on Daigo Fukuryu Maru.
For Setouchi Triennale 2013, Yanobe installed Jumbo Torayan on the deck of ferryboat connecting Kobe and Shodoshima Island. Jumbo Torayan had a twig of olive in his hand as a dove in Noah’s Ark appeared with a leaf of olive. Shodoshima Island is fam ous for its olive and Yanobe staged the ferry as Noah’s Ark and likened Shodoshima Island to the island of hope (in Old Testament,
a mountain peak which the Ark arrived after the big flood.) Yanobe’s Ark increases and grows, transcending the boundary between fantasy and reality.
