Relay Column: Clothes & Memories (Takuya Umeda)

I have a bad habit in the morning of opening my closet entirely to choose the day's outfit, throwing my sweaty, dirty pajamas haphazardly on the floor, changing, and then leaving the house. Because I lived with my parents for so long, I became spoiled, knowing that my mom would clean up and do the laundry for me.

With that in mind, I moved out of my parents' home and started living alone in Tokyo when I entered graduate school. Shortly after I began living in my dorm, I had an opportunity to call my mom for some reason. During that conversation, my mom laughed as she complained that when she entered my room to clean up after I left, the closet was all open, and my pajamas were scattered around as usual. She mentioned that the familiar sight made her think, if she cleaned it up, maybe I would return by nightfall. That had a strangely profound impact on me, and even now, six years later, I remember it vividly.

Clothes left behind imbue a memory of whoever was there. When I saw "Christian Boltanski—Lifetime," a retrospective of Christian Boltanski held at the National Art Center, Tokyo in Nogizaka in 2019, I thought the same thing (1). Boltanski was an artist who created works themed around memory using everyday items like second-hand clothes and photographs (2). One piece, "Bota-yama," was a conceptual art installation that piled black clothes into a mountain-like heap, reminiscent of slag heaps from abandoned coal mines. These carelessly piled black garments suggest those who died and were not recorded in history.