While working as a secretary in Japan in 1996 - 1997, I repeatedly took snapshots of two subjects on the way to work: the commuter train and my locker at work. I called this routine Secretary Project, and accumulated about 200 snapshots by the end of my secretary contract. This daily activity became to reinforce the symbiotic relationship between my living and artmaking, which is more pragmatic than romantic. I use artmaking to live a desired life style/identity and recycle my daily life for making art. The medium of snapshot which came as a practical solution for the absence of traditional art media, studio space and/or time also forced me to re-evaluate my own perceptions about creative process and artistic authority. Later, yet in a different context, the Secretary Project virtually continued in the monotonous labour of installing the numerous snapshots in grids and the tracing of each snapshot and its date on the walls of the gallery, recapitulating the routine daily activities of my secretary period. The installation of these frozen and ephemeral remnants of my activities (snapshots and wall drawings) extended my continuous engagement in observing and addressing the peculiar yet mundane relationship between living life and art-making.

 

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