When I began working on the concept and preparations for a new solo exhibition to be held in Osaka this year, memories of a journey to Turkey many years ago suddenly came back to me.

It was the scene of my visit to The Museum of Innocence by the author Ferit Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul.

At the end of a very quiet little street, filled with the atmosphere of a foreign land, stood a small, unassuming building.

That was Pamuk’s private museum.

Two years after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 2008, he published his novel The Museum of Innocence. As if to recreate the world of that story, he established a “museum” in his hometown of Istanbul, filling it with small objects on display.

Perhaps it is one of the smallest museums in the world, yet through tangible things, that space guided readers into the novel’s dreamlike world, letting them drift between reality and fiction, and it felt as if it expanded into an infinite universe.

Inspired by that memory, I wanted to create my own Museum of Innocence, lasting only seven days, with a handful of small works.

These works take shape from the “memories of innocence” that each of us has somehow lost along the way:

— The button my mother sewed onto children’s clothing for the first time.
— The stuffed animal my father chose for me while away on a business trip.
— Those modest little things that, simply by existing, could stir a fleeting sense of loneliness.
— The items in a shop window I longed for but walked away from with lingering regret.
— Or that brief, abstract, fragile ray of light that shone through just for a moment after the rain.

Such things have gradually faded from daily life, becoming memories rarely spoken of anymore.

— And yet, they remain carefully stored away somewhere in the heart, irreplaceable treasures.

And one day, I reach out, gently brush off the dust, and softly ask:

“Have you been well?”