A man and a woman stood side by side, pointing and looking at the Beppu Hot Springs World Map by Sohei Nishino

As I walked through the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art in Kawasaki, I came to a space where something that was clearly not the work of Taro Okamoto was on display. The winning works of the 24th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art were on display. This award is said to be a successor to Taro Okamoto's will and asks who will create the times?

Still, I don't understand contemporary art. I think that every work of art has some kind of meaning, but I lack the ability to grasp that meaning, and I am a little disappointed that I can only appreciate it on a low level, whether I find it interesting or not. Furthermore, even if I find the works on display interesting, there are few that I would want to display in my home.

In such a situation, the work of Sohei Nishino attracted my interest among the exhibited works. The work was created by hand-collaging a huge number of black-and-white photographs taken while walking around the city, one by one, and was set in Beppu.

Not only do I like photography, but I also find map-like things interesting, because the things on the map do not necessarily have any meaning, and even if they don't, the things that exist do so on their own, regardless of human convenience. I think that maps show how people perceive the world. Therefore, even if we see the same world, each person must have a different map. I don't often compare my own map with others', but I think it's a good idea.

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