To celebrate its 10th anniversary of the National Art Center Tokyo, Emmanuelle Moureaux has created a large scale paper installation, Forest of Numbers, to symbolise the next 10 years to come. Without any partition walls, the 2,000 square meter white cube exhibition room became a canvas of the installation, filled with 100 colours, inspiration and emotion, which became the largest installation of Emmanuelle Moureaux’s work.
Forest of Numbers was meant to visualise the future, from 2017 to 2026, creating a sense of stillness across the large exhibition space. More than 60,000 pieces of suspended numeral figures from 0 to 9 were regularly aligned in three dimensional grids. A section was removed, created a path that cut through the installation, invited visitors to wonder inside the colorful forest filled with numbers. The installation was composed of 10 layers which is the representation of 10 years time. Each layer employed 4 digits to express the relevant year such as 2, 0, 1, and 7 for 2017, which were randomly positioned on the grids.
As part of Emmanuelle’s 100 colors installation series, the layers of time were coloured in 100 shades of colours, created a colourful time travel through the forest. Inside the colourful forest, two girls and one cat were lost inside, added playfulness to the installation. Together with the installation, the exhibition posters from the last ten years filled the wall on the right, and the opposite wall across the room simply expressed the next ten years with white numbers. As photography was exceptionally allowed, the installation has spread through various social networks, increasing number of visitors. This installation was created with the cooperation of 300 volunteers, gathering the attention of over 20,000 visitors in 10 days.
all images © Daisuke Shima