Airport for Souls - Art Installation by Drue Kataoka
“In an airport there are continuous arrivals and departures. In a hospital there are too, but is it arrivals (birth) departures (death) or arrivals (death) departures (birth)?”
Medium: Installation of hospital bed in a white room, and a soundtrack of airport sounds, high winds & other selected recordings made by the artist
Created: 2010
Airport for Souls was inspired by Drue's trip to Japan 2 years ago to see her dad in his hospital room, days before his death from cancer. This work draws the parallel between hospitals and airports—the hospital is where the human life journey begins and ends. We enter this world as a spot of blood on the hospital sheets, and we leave this world the same way. Blood on the sheets symbolizes simultaneously death and birth, but also the Rising Sun, as a tribute to Drue's dad. The installation includes a hospital bed with a painted red spot and a soundtrack mixing airport recordings, hospital sounds and storm winds to create a haunting impression of the transience of life.
This is an empty hospital bed, but also it is a hospital bed filled with suffering and hope. It is Drue's dad's hospital bed, but it is also anybody's hospital bed—in fact, anybody's bed. It is a canvas displaying the Japanese flag, but also it is a spot of blood on a white sheet—a universal experience. The blood symbolizes pain, illness and death, but also hope and birth—and even rebirth. In an airport there are continuous arrivals and departures. In a hospital there are too, but is it arrivals (birth) departures (death) or arrivals (death) departures (birth)?
The hospital is this universal symbol where life starts and ends, it unites us in our human experiences—but it also divides us—because in some parts of the world there are no hospitals, at least no hospitals with clean white sheets. Listen to the sound on the video clip. The TSA recording takes on haunting levels of meaning, as we collectively move through these "checkpoints."
