As if to symbolize this city of wool fabric, a work made of lambʼs wool is displayed in the lobby of Ichinomiya City Hall. This work is the result of the “Aichi NAU Project” carried out by textile artist and researcher Sanada Takehiko in collaboration with seven museums in six cities in the prefecture, focusing on the textile culture of Aichi.Some 300 participants who learned about the history of various textiles in the prefecture repeatedly twisted wool, while Sanada twisted all of this wool together to create ropes as thick as tree trunks. Through this process of twisting, the techniques inherited by Aichi Prefecture, the relationship between Aichi and the world, relationships between people, and the relationship between people and the region and nature were sublimated into a work of art.

Sanada has been traveling around the world since his 20s. When he was 30 years old, he spent several months in Greenland in the Arctic Circle where he met the Inuit people, who live with plants and animals in a magnificent natural ecosystem, and realized that “the joy of living is right at our feet.” Since then, he has carried on with his creative practice harboring a desire to “act in the pursuit of happiness and gratitude for each day,” through the very fibers that have been nurtured in the daily lives of Japanese people.

Sanada believes that the sense of richness and plenitude of living in Aichi lies in the “power” of the land created by Lake Tokai, which existed some 1.2 million years ago. The soil that accumulated along the shores of this lake gave rise to a culture of ceramics, while the plants that subsequently grew on the vast plains where the soil accumulated nurtured a culture of textiles and fabrics. Textile technologies also nurtured the wool industry and opened up various possibilities for the automotive, aerospace, and aviation industries. The fundamental technique of twisting contains the traces, struggles, joys, hopes, and prayers of our ancestors who were born and lived in this land, and who each lived through and survived their own eras.

Selected Works & Awards

2008－

Cotton Project, Tokyo, Japan

2002－

Angin Project, Niigata, Japan

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Aichi NAU Project “HAKUI”, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio