What is at the Centre of Your World? #2

By Xan Anderson / March 2025

A Conversation with Chisato Yamakawa

Chisato Yamakawa is a conceptual artist, who explores the ephemeral nature of experience and how seemingly disparate moments—both personal and collective—accumulate, interact, and shape our understanding of ourselves. Each series takes on a distinct medium and approach yet remains tied to a deep interest in mapping time and tracing patterns of connection. Through this process, she considers how even the smallest gestures and occurrences reverberate, revealing subtle structures within life.

Xan: What is at the centre of your world?

Chisato: I think time. I don’t know what it is but I feel like I have a hyperawareness of it. About the passing of time. Asking what time it is. And this thing that in my perspective is fleeting. There are so many theories about time and whether it’s linear or not. I believe it is linear.

Xan: Really?

Chisato: Yeah, it just keeps on going. Relentless. And so I’m interested in marking those moments. Reflecting on past moments to sort of regain that time.

Xan: Why make art?

Chisato: I guess for one, It felt like a part of my purpose. I wanted to go to Art school but my parents said I could go to Architecture school. So I did that.

Xan: Instead of art school?

Chisato: Yeah, and then I knew I didn’t want to be an architect so I looked at curatorial, did my masters in that and in a moment felt that it was something within me. I have to get out of my brain. I guess it’s a personal thing and I have to explore that for myself.

Xan: So it’s instant?

Chisato: Yeah. A very personal process. My fragments are sort of like diary entries. Exploring how I see my world.

Xan: Mmm, exploration of self. (Laughter from both) Do you feel like you’re finding answers?

Chisato: Well my relationship with my mum has changed through this. I learnt through her. I want to make sure those traditional crafts are preserved. So I guess I’m finding something.

Xan: When did you admit to being an artist?

Chisato: Ooo, that’s fun. It was very late. Yeah, I didn’t think I could claim it if I wasn’t doing it full-time. I had a friend who decided to pursue art full-time after architecture school and he kept telling me “no, you’re an artist”, whenever he would introduce me.

Xan: A good friend.

Chisato: I have a moment actually marked.

Xan: Yeah ?!

Chisato: Yeah

Xan: (gasps)

Chisato: March 22nd 2022. I wrote a capital A. For artist

Xan: brilliant, So that’s when you admitted?

Chisato: Yeah

Xan: March 22nd 2022. Very cool. If you walked into a room containing everything you’ve ever lost, what is the first thing you’d look for?

Chisato: A ‘lost and not found again’?

Xan: Yeah.

Chisato: Oh, tricky. I don’t lose too many things (laughter). I lose my glasses, often, but eventually they’re found. Most of the time.

Xan: So it would just be an empty room with a couple pairs of specs?

Chisato: Yeah, pretty much

Xan: Nothing is an answer in itself.

Chisato: What about you?

Xan: I think I’m too comfortable with losing things. It’s accepted not long after its

lost. But the room would most definitely not be empty.

Xan: If not art then what?

Chisato: I think I’d want to work in a flower shop.

Xan: Nice, Why? What draws you to it? Because in ways it’s quite similar to painting. The arranging of colours and such.

Chisato: Well, I have a complicated relationship with flowers. I don’t like them very much because they just die. I think that would be interesting to explore.

Xan: Back too time.

Chisato: Yeah, they just die. Actually, whenever I get given flowers I hang them upside down almost immediately. So they’re preserved.

Xan: Interesting. Do you have any irrational fears?

Chisato: For a little bit I had a fear of perishing creatively. Not expressing myself through my art and not exploring that.

Xan: Very rational. A loss of potential would you say?

Chisato: Yeah, especially as I was told what to do. Go to architecture school and so I didn’t have the opportunity. Other than that I don’t like small spaces.

Xan: Do you have a book or film that inspired you in a pivotal moment?

Chisato: Ooo there is a couple that stand out. In the slaughter-house five books there are these Tralfamadorian characters. They kind of look like plunger-head guys.

Xan: What a good name, Tralfamadorians.

Chisato: They see space and time all at once.

Xan: Tralfamadorians. If every time you walked into a room a song played, what song would it be?

Chisato: (a pause) Turquoise galaxy, Yussef Dayes.

Xan: I see it.

Record 250209 (7 teaspoons), 2025