Aya Kurashiki Solo Exhibition
"When Your Bones Creak"
倉敷安耶個展「おまえの骨が軋むとき」
2025.02.01 – 2025.02.16
12:00 PM – 7:00 PM Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
On Saturday, February 1st only, the gallery will be open from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.

ARTDYNE is pleased to present Aya Kurashiki’s first solo exhibition at our gallery, titled “When Your Bones Creak.”
Aya Kurashiki was born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1993 and completed her master’s degree in oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2020. She was a recipient of the Sato International Cultural Scholarship (26th term) and a fellow of the Kuma Foundation (3rd term). In 2021, she was selected as an associate artist for the VIVA AWARD. Currently, she is based in Tokyo.
Kurashiki primarily creates two-dimensional works using transfer techniques, alongside ritualistic installations and performances. Her artistic exploration spans a wide range of themes, from macro-level subjects such as religion, gender, life and death, and the human body, to more personal spheres such as profession and family. Through her works, she seeks to examine intimate communication, coexistence, and the possibility of merging with others.
In this exhibition, she presents an installation that reimagines the Japanese bone-picking funeral ritual as a dining table setting. By doing so, she delves into fundamental themes such as life and death, the body and the soul, encounters and farewells.
Artist Statement
A dining table represents the smallest unit of a temporary community. When we sit across from someone and share a meal, the space between us expands into a reflection of our relationship. Eating is an act of consuming the remains of another being—taking in the death of food through our mouths and incorporating it into our own bodies. Life is sustained by integrating others into our flesh and blood, and by sharing a meal, we partake in the pleasure of Eros.
At funerals, I have sometimes thought that the act of gathering around cremated bones and picking them up with chopsticks resembles a dining scene. As we wait for the deceased to be fully cremated, we share a meal together—just as if we were waiting for the main course at a banquet. In fact, the connection between funerary rituals and food runs deep; many funeral ceremonies involve communal meals or offerings to the dead.
Jacques Derrida once stated that mourning—dealing with the sorrow of losing someone—makes it possible to “never eat alone.” The melancholic process of accepting loss involves carrying the other within oneself, internalizing and embracing them. Through this, we come to understand the act of eating together (living together) with others.
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “Culinary Triangle,” cooking methods can be categorized into three main states: raw, cooked, and fermented (decomposed). I believe that funerary practices share this same structure. If a living person represents the raw state, then the dead are generally either cremated ( cooked) or buried ( decomposed). Methods such as cremation, sea burials, and natural burials all follow this principle. Sky burials, too, are a form of decomposition that returns the body to nature.
(On a lover’s dinner night, whispered words of love and foreplay often begin at the mouth. It is, after all, an act of taking the other into oneself—both physically and emotionally.) Our connection to others begins at the lips.
One’s own death is only recognized as death when it is perceived by others. Even my own death is something that exists only in relation to those who acknowledge it. And yet, despite this interdependence, death remains uniquely individual—my body, no matter what, is mine alone.
—Aya Kurashiki