-
Crabby Chic
Real estate for hermit crabs
-
The Japanese artist Aki Inomata first began contemplating the strangeness of ownership and territory when participating in an exhibition at the French Embassy in Japan in 2009. In a strange diplomatic deal, the ownership of the land that the Embassy sat on had just changed hands between the French and the Japanese, and the extant building was due for demolition. The ease and arbitrariness with which a site’s national identity had been swapped prompted Inomata to create a series of works reflecting on nationhood through the metaphor of the portable shell of the hermit crab.
All images: Aki Inomata’s “Why Not Hand Over a Shelter to Hermit Crabs?” series, 2010-2013. (All photos: courtesy Aki Inomata)
-
Miniature windmills, churches, and even entire cities jut from the surface of her 3D-printed shells, which are modelled upon CT scans of abandoned crab shells and then recreated in transparent resin. Inomata then allows crabs to inspect the new shelters at their leisure – she says “most hermit crabs don’t even glance at” them, but occasionally one of the creatures finds its dream real estate and settles in.
Yadokari, the Japanese term for hermit crab, means “house borrower”, in other words, one who rents rather than owns. As Inomata puts it: “It seems that the bodies of the crabs don’t identify them, but rather the shelters identify them, like one’s country or property does.” For that reason the wearable architectures she chooses to reproduce are often potent cultural signifiers associated with hybrid belonging and belief systems; in the most recent series of works called White Chapel, the crab shells are adorned with typical Japanese wedding chapels, which are built in the style of western Christian churches – though only one percent of the population identifies as Christian. Apparently some hermit crabs find that contradiction a perfect fit. I (ew)
-
Search
-
FIND PRODUCTS
PRODUCT GROUP
- Building Materials
- Building Panels
- Building technology
- Façade
- Fittings
- Heating, Cooling, Ventilation
- Interior
- Roof
- Sanitary facilities
MANUFACTURER
- 3A Composites
- Alape
- Armstrong
- Caparol
- Eternit
- FSB
- Gira
- Hagemeister
- JUNG
- Kaldewei
- Lamberts
- Leicht
- Solarlux
- Steininger Designers
- Stiebel Eltron
- Velux
- Warema
- Wilkhahn
FEATURED
-
Follow Us
Tumblr
New and existing Tumblr users can connect with uncube and share our visual diary.
»Architectural interpretations accepted without reflection could obscure the search for signs of a true nature and a higher order.«
Louis Isadore Kahn
Keyboard Shortcuts
- Skip Articles
- Turn Pages
- Contents