There are moments when one feels suspended between places — not fully belonging to any, yet shaped by all. It is within this quiet in-between that the artist’s series takes form, reflecting on the psychological weight of relocation and emigration that has marked their life. The title draws from a keyboard shortcut the artist frequently uses when typing in Japanese, and it serves as an indirect representation of their national background — a subtle key that unlocks layers of cultural and linguistic identity.
The narrative of the work traces back to a formative relocation in childhood. When the artist’s father was transferred to Niigata Prefecture, more than a thousand kilometers from their hometown, the family left behind the familiarity of city life to join him in a rural setting. Their strong Kyushu dialect immediately distinguished them as outsiders, and adapting to the new environment became a quiet, collective challenge. This early experience, compounded by earlier moves, instilled a deep-rooted dissonance with any single place — a sense of restlessness that would later permeate the artist’s worldview and creative practice.
Years later, a DNA test revealed a small percentage of British ancestry — an unexpected link that eventually drew the artist to the very country where a great-great-grandfather had once lived. This discovery became an echo across time, a mirror between two migrations: one ancestral, one contemporary, both defined by the feeling of otherness in a foreign land.
The series intertwines fragments of personal and familial history — architectural details, a grandfather’s passport photograph, unfamiliar faces from family albums. Within these images, geometric forms appear deliberately out of place, subtly disrupting the visual harmony. These interventions evoke the sensation of displacement itself: the slight misalignment that accompanies the search for belonging.
Perhaps the work is less about finding home than about dwelling in the spaces between — where distance becomes memory, and dissonance, a quiet form of understanding.
