Biennale art: God of the kiln speaks volumes on human greed

Kochi: The ‘God of the kiln’ slumbers in silence in a dark corner of Aspinwall House, waking only once a day to pop a golden ball out from its navel. “Once a day and no more,” says the sculpture’s creator and Kochi-Muziris Biennale artist Takayuki Yamamoto. Borrowing from a Japanese folktale about the ‘Kama-gami’ similar to the Aesopian fable about the goose which would lay golden eggs, Yamamoto’s life-size work is a cautionary tale against greed and the present-day repercussions of wanting more.

“The Fukushima reactor is still leaking nuclear waste into the sea. This is a result of human greed. The capacity for greedy acts exists in every human being, but the satiation of one’s greed comes with the cost of someone else’s suffering,” Yamamoto said. Born in the Aichi prefecture, near the industrial city of Toyota, Yamamoto sees unquenchable greed as the dark side of civilisation and modernity. It is also, he acknowledges, the basis for his practice: this is why his work – the ‘Tale of the God of the kiln’ – bears its maker’s likeness.

The folk story speaks of an orphan boy who was adopted and raised by a childless elderly couple, who – after discovering that the child’s navel functions as a repository for golden grain – killed him. “This idea of being able to make money from nothing is born from greed. I see myself, as an artist who looks to make a profit from my own self, to be part of this cycle of creation for cash. In this respect, I see myself in the story of the ‘god of the kiln’,” Takayuki Yamamoto said.