Naoko TakaHashi
99 Red White Green Black Balloons
“99 Red White Green Black Balloons”(2007): In her installation of balloons for the Jerusalem Show, Naoko Takahashi carefully chooses the colours of the balloons to represent the colours of the Palestinian national flag in order to make direct representation of Palestinians and the extensive lack of freedom they face on physical movement and on human rights. Naoko utilizes three rooms for her installation, arranging each balloon colour in a separate room. The artist focuses on the theme of the 'exhaustive state' that comes from having to live in repressed conditions through her presentation of balloons which have been blown up using helium thus enabling them to rise high to the ceiling's surface, only to later begin a slow dissension to the floor. TakaHashi invited visitors to walk around the balloons that had eventually fallen to the ground, and to witness the balloons situated high in their restricted corners, unable to fly any further, (alluding to the restrictions of Palestinians imposed upon them due to Israeli/Palestinian conflict). The title of TakaHashi's work was deliberately adopted from the name of an eighties German protest song by Nina, who sang about balloons rising to the sky only to be shot down by military forces. The installation was created at the Centre for Jerusalem Studies, The Mamluk Hammam el Ein, Suq Al-Qattanin, Old City.
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