She never talks about how her mother left. (Death? Abandonment? Illness? The franchise leaves it ambiguous, because for Ichika, the cause matters less than the result.) She never cries on screen. She never lashes out at her friends for having complete families. She never uses her loss as an excuse for bad behavior.
In 2023, Ichika collaborated with sound artist Ryoji Ikeda to create a 45-minute audio piece exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The installation consists of a single empty chair, a rotary telephone, and a loop of Ichika dialing her mother’s number — which has been disconnected — and leaving voicemails. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...
Her first public work was not a book or gallery show. It was a series of 12 Instagram posts, each a photograph of her refrigerator’s interior. The fridge is organized exactly as her mother left it: pickled plums on the second shelf, miso in the left drawer, a small container of leftover simmered squash wrapped in wax paper dated three days before her death. She never talks about how her mother left
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