Art residency in Ogatsu, Moriumius Center, Japan (May, 2026)

„I feel like I’m in some hole of time. The moments appear to disappear; I can’t hold them. Remembering and forgetting—this is the core of my research.”

Tamatebako: Light Appears Unexpectedly is a project exploring the transience of time, memory, and the act of preservation. The project is deeply rooted in the Japanese folktale of Urashima Taro. In the legend, the princess Otohime gives Taro a tamatebako (a mysterious box) that supposedly contains his aging process, allowing him to stay young while living in an immortal realm. When he finally breaks his promise and opens the box, his „stolen time” is released as white smoke, instantly aging him by 300 years.

Reflecting on this legend during my residency at MORIUMIUS—a landscape shaped by the 2011 tsunami and its subsequent regeneration—I began to understand the impossibility of holding a moment. I reimagined the tamatebako not as a vessel for lost years, but as a sanctuary for „stored light.” I explore these layers of time and feeling through dance. These performances served as a ritual, an act of acknowledgment for the ancestors of the forest and sea in Ogatsu. My process also included participatory workshops with local children, where we created our own „dream boxes” from ocean findings—acts of collective memory-making in a world where things are always vanishing.

This project has been a difficult, transformative journey of accepting constant changes. It is an attempt to fill the emptiness with light, acknowledging that even if our time eventually turns to ash, the search itself is what gives our existence meaning.

Supported by the City of Gdańsk under the Cultural Scholarship „Mobility Fund.”
Zrealizowano ze środków Miasta Gdańska w ramach Gdańskiego Stypendium Kulturalnego Fundusz Mobilności.