Kenta Toda

Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan

Artist statement

I make shoes by hand as my sole medium. Shoes—invented by bipedal humans—have long supported continental migration and environmental adaptation. Beyond mere tools, they have symbolized authority and class, and their technological development has consistently been driven by military needs throughout history. Building on that development, shoes are now the subject of research by major corporations to enhance athletic performance, and they have eventually become a mass-produced good under the name ‘sneaker’ circulating across borders. Since they are bound tightly to the aura radiated by the leaping athlete, sneakers became a device for elevating one's social status through consuming them as objects of conspicuous consumption. In this way, because it depends on the human body, the shoe — clinging to nearly every human foot since its invention — has repeatedly transformed across eras, acquiring diverse allegories such as class, the body, gender, labor, the environment, and war. Likewise, bearing the body's full weight, it is built from a wide range of materials through a distinctive pattern structure of its own — and this material aspect, too, carries its own cultural and historical necessity. For me, making work means deconstructing both the "allegorical aspect" and the "material aspect" of the shoe and reconstructing them into artworks — critically rereading the systems and value norms humans have built, such as capitalism, fetishism, and cultural homogenization. Many of the...

Artwork