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, The Shameful Chrysanthemum I.I, Self-publishing, 2025, © Sayo Senoo

In this book, two images are superimposed. One is a part of a chest of a 19th-20th century Japanese leader. The other is a close-up of anus.

The leaders of the time wore proudly the Japanese legion of honour, made after the Legion d'Honneur of Napoleon, overflowing on their chests. Importing colonialism and expansionism from the West, they led a foolish invasion in Asia.

By the way, some of the Japanese Legion d'Honneur were designed from the chrysanthemum flower, the signature of the Emperor family. The chrysanthemum flower at the same time metaphor to the anus, in Japanese slang of certain communities.

In this book I wanted to ask which chrysanthemum is more shameful, overlapping the two images: These badges or a part of our body?

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Sayo Senoo, Tachinbo, Self-publishing, 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 paper, and compiled into a zine. With this project, I aimed to illustrate their sense of profond loneliness and self-abandonment.

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This little book is made from my collection of photos downloaded from various sex related business websites in Japan. I worked in this kind of company to pay for my art studies. These jobs are mentally and physically heavy. But the high pay prevents most of us from quitting before our health is damaged.

The images are transformed through several processes using inkjet printers to make visible these physical and mental damages, the fatigues and the pains, that hide behind the seductive poses and smiles of the people in the photos.
The book is printed by the inkjet printer on an incompatible paper, so that the images are ephemeral and fragile like as our body.

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