In Conversation with Haroshi: Pain

In Conversation with Haroshi: Pain

Today our conversation series with Haroshi continues as we discuss pain.

StolenSpace: Your solo exhibition ‘Pain’ on display now at StolenSpace deals with the concepts of physical pain as well as psychological struggle.  Would you say the act of art making can be painful? If yes, how so?

Haroshi: I was a very sickly child.  I would be hospitalised every year. The only way for a kid like me to make an appeal was the “arts and crafts” that we had to make as summer homework.  I worked so hard on them all summer with my grandfather.  It was a lot of work but so much fun.  And the feedback was great. Everyone told me how amazed they were at what I had made.  Ever since then, creating an object has never been a casual task.  For me, it was a desperate act to make up for what I lacked.

Now that I’m an adult and I make sculptures, I hurt my back from working too much, and now I can’t ride skateboards, which I love so much.  I sometimes think maybe it’s not a pleasant sight to see someone holding on to skateboards when the guy can’t even skate anymore.  It’s not cool for a person who can’t skate to be engaged in anything that has to do with skateboarding.

And also it takes so long to finish one sculpture.  And the procedure is not all fun and games of course. There’re many parts where I feel like I might go crazy, and it’s so hard to maintain my concentration throughout the long procedure. I think that in order to create something satisfactory, you can’t just work on something that you want to do or that’s easy for you.  For me, expressing myself goes hand in hand with pain, suffering, and agony.  That was the way it was for Life of Pain and Agony into the Beautiful. The more strong the negative elements are, the more beautiful your creations become.

‘Pain’ is open until 3rd November at StolenSpace Gallery.