Sayo Senoo

Sayo Senoo is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist based in Paris. She is working with atypical materials such as used condoms gleaned from outdoor cruising locations, contaminated air from the forbidden areas of Fukushima, or animal organs discarded by hunters in the Arctic. By transforming rubbish into delicate art works, she questions the nature of our disgust and fear against dirty things. She started to make publications in 2019 to document her ephemeral works, and as a creative medium in itself. All the books and zines are delicately hand-made by herself, and in limited edition.

In 2010, she benefited from an atelier at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2019, she received the Paul-Louis Weiller Award for sculpture from the prestigious Academy of Fine Art in Paris. She participated in various art book fairs including Paris Ass Book Fair, I Never Read, Volume and Miss Read.

Sayo Senoo, Tachinbo, Sayo Senoo, 2024 © Sayo Senoo

This book is about prostitutes who solicit customers on the street (= Tachinbo, in Japanese), which is increasing in recent years in Tokyo.

Most of these very young women work as prostitutes not out of financial necessity, but due to a yearning to attend a "host club." A "host club," in essence, is a bar where attractive and talkative men entertain their customers. In exchange for being treated like a princess, the costs can amount to several to dozens of times the average cost of living in a very short time.

I transformed screenshots of videos featuring these women on YouTube. The screenshots were printed on paper, left outdoors overnight as posters, retrieved, scanned, re-printed on crumpled paper, and compiled into a zine. With this project, I aimed to illustrate their sense of profond loneliness and self-abandonment.

12,4x20cm, 20pages, 100 copies.

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Sayo Senoo, Bodies That Shed Tears 3, Sayo Senoo, 2024 © Sayo Senoo

Bodies that shed tears 3 is made from photos downloaded from various sex- related business websites in Japan. I used to work in this kind of business to pay for my art studies. These jobs are mentally and physically demanding. But the high salary prevents most of us from stopping before our health is damaged.
The images have been transformed by several processes using inkjet printers, to illustrate the physical and mental damage, the fatigue and pain, that lurk behind the seductive poses and smiles of the people in the photos.
The book was printed using an inkjet printer on incompatible paper, so that the images are ephemeral and fragile, just like our bodies.

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The image is photo of "The Shameful Chrysanthemum part I". The part II will be printed in this February. On these books two images are superimposed. One is part of the chest of a Japanese official from the 19th to the 20th century. The other is a close-up of an anal membrane.
The political leaders of the time proudly wore the Japanese Legion of Honour, inspired by Napoleon's Legion of Honour, which spilled over their chests. As an import of Western colonialism and expansionism, they led foolish invasions into Asia.
In fact, some of the Japanese Legions of Honour were designed using the chrysanthemum flower, the signature of the emperor's family. The chrysanthemum flower is also a metaphor for the anus, in the Japanese slang of certain communities.
By superimposing the two images, I wanted to ask which chrysanthemum is more shameful: these badges or a part of our body?

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