To create his installation Why Not Hand Over a "Shelter" to Hermit Crabs? the artist studied the structure of the shells chosen by the little crustacean, and made new ones, each more crazy and eccentric than the last. As part of the exhibition, which presents his various models for the first time in France, Aki Inomata offers shells in the shape of the New York skyline, a Baroque castle or the Chinese Wall!
These structures are modeled using 3D graphics software and printed using a complex printing and extrusion process. The whole thing evokes a completely delirious, organic fashion show, staged in a collaboration between man, technology and nature, where each little animal would wear a unique piece.
The set also showcases the relationship with the artificial, ephemeral habitat that the crustacean naturally seizes upon, in an astonishing integration of the digital with the organic.
Aki Inomata was born in 1983 in Tokyo, Japan, and graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in the Inter-Media Art section. Her work focuses on the relationships and collaborative processes between humanity and nature. She transforms living creatures into works of art to make us reflect on aesthetic, social and political issues.
