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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