About the artwork

Playground equipment shaped like space rockets and satellites can be commonly seen in parks around the former Soviet Union. For this piece, the artist recreated such equipment by Shinanogawa Hydropower Station Head Tanks Connected One Another of Tepco Renewable Power. Their size is larger than typical playground equipment and shapes are deformed as if they are beginning to melt, signifying that this is not a typical park. These differences represent a repudiation of the image that dreams of space were shared across the former Soviet Union since Yuri Gagarin’s successful spaceflight in 1961, as well as the demise of Soviet-style utopia. The artist explains how Russian troops and residents of Ukraine likely played on the same sort of equipment when they were children. This installation is therefore overlaid with the image of a park in Kyiv, where the artist’s daughter often used to play but which was destroyed by bombing.
Space rockets are also suggestive of the missiles Russia is currently firing toward Ukraine, making this artwork – which can only be seen from a distance – into a “unreachable playground.” It therefore becomes a space speaking to lost happiness and evocative of childhoods past. (The current exhibit is relocated from the Shinanogawa Hydropower Station Head Tanks Connected One Another of Tepco Renewable Power.)

Curator: Kono Wakana
Design: Toshimitsu Osamu, Tao Hirohide, Yanagi Daisuke