WAITINGROOM (Tokyo) is pleased to present “Is that snake,” a solo exhibition by Saya Okubo, on view from Saturday, July 12 to Sunday, August 10, 2025. This will be Okubo’s first solo presentation at the gallery in nearly three years, and it is organized in conjunction with “project N 99 Saya Okubo” at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, running from July 11 to October 2, 2025. Across both exhibitions, Okubo will present new works and new series inspired by motifs drawn from Kokon Chomonjū, a 13th-century Japanese collection of setsuwa (narrative tales). These fragmented stories—passed down from person to person and continually transformed in the retelling—resonate with Okubo’s own painting practice, in which motifs waver on the flat surface through repeated cycles of construction and collapse. We invite you to witness how these two worlds intersect and unfold within the gallery space.

Is that snake, 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas panel, 1455 × 1120 × d145 mm

About the artist, Saya Okubo
Born in 1992 in Fukuoka, Japan. She completed her MFA in Painting at Kyoto University of Art and Design (now Kyoto University of the Arts) in 2017, and currently lives and works in Tokyo. Okubo describes her practice as a way of “exploring the perception and dissonance of images within the shallow space of a flat surface.” By sketching the contours of her motifs in rapid, deliberate strokes, she intentionally abstracts them and detaches them from their narrative backdrops. The resulting ambiguous imagery interacts with the viewer’s memories and senses, creating room for new interpretations and unseen landscapes.
Recent exhibitions include the solo exhibition “project N 99 Saya Okubo” (2025, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo); group exhibition “To Sway and Surround : Japanese Female Abstraction” (2025, Each Modern, Taipei, Taiwan); solo exhibition “Replicas that tell a story” (2024, Kyoto TSUTAYA BOOKS 6F Gallery, Kyoto); solo exhibition “Leimotiv” (2024, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY, Tokyo); group exhibition “collection #08” (2024, rin art association, Gunma); group exhibition “SPRING SHOW” (2024, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo); group exhibition “RE:FACTORY_2” (2024, WALL_alternative, Tokyo); group exhibition “’The lens within your heart’ from the TAKEUCHI COLLECTION” (2023, WHAT MUSEUM 2F, Tokyo); solo exhibition “Box of moonlight” (2022, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo); solo exhibition “The mirror crack’d from side to side” (2022, Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery, Tokyo); solo exhibition “We are defenseless. / We are aggressive.” (2022, Nihombashi Mituskoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY, Tokyo); solo exhibition “They” (2020, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo) and many others. She also received the Masami Shiraishi Award at the “4th CAF Award” exhibition in 2017.

Artist Statement
“Counting back from the year the hall was constructed, it had been more than sixty years. To think that a creature could survive all that time while nailed to the structure was terrifying. The board beneath which the snake lay shimmered as though polished with oil.”
— Kokon Chomonjū (13th century)

One tale in Kokon Chomonjū, a medieval Japanese collection of narratives, tells of a snake found beneath the roofboards of a Buddhist hall, impaled by a nail. The snake, pierced through its body, is said to have lived within the roof for more than sixty years. As the tale has been passed down and retold over the centuries, the figure of the snake has transformed—into a centipede, a gecko, a lizard; from a lone creature to a pair; and even appearing in modern essays by authors like Teru Miyamoto. The image of a creature “nailed down, yet still alive” continues to resonate across generations. Whether one sees in it the horror of vitality or the grace of divine compassion depends on how the creature is imagined.

To paint a motif may sometimes feel like nailing an image in place. The lines and colors fixed to the surface by a strong, directional force seem to overlap with the impaled snake. Can a hidden, uncertain image—pinned down repeatedly—still form a visible shape?
The snake was nailed down / The snake was painted
The snake was by the carpenter / The snake was by me
The snake was under the roof / The snake was on the canvas
The snake lived / The snake lives?

— Saya Okubo, June 2025

The Snake Nailed Down / The Motif Unraveled
In her work, Okubo employs masking tape that she later peels off, revealing sharp, abstracted contours beneath a flat painted surface scattered with swift oil brushstrokes. These gestures, capturing fleeting moments of movement, detach the motifs from their original contexts and strip them of singular meaning. The resulting ambiguity invites viewers to reassemble the fragmented elements using their own memory, sensation, and imagination. Her motifs—seemingly fixed on the surface—are constantly shifting within the viewer’s inner landscape, forming and dissolving in an ongoing process. In this state of perpetual flux, Okubo’s paintings reject reductive questions like “What is this?” or “Who is depicted here?” Instead, they open up interpretive possibilities: “It looks like A… or perhaps B…”—a space of multivalence and abstraction.

Okubo refers to this phenomenon as “the dissonance of image perception,” and in this exhibition, it intersects with the Kokon Chomonjū and its many-layered tales. These stories, passed down from person to person, have morphed in meaning and tone over time. The titular “snake” of this exhibition comes from the story “Nailed Down for Sixty Years,” in which a snake impaled beneath the roof of a temple is said to have survived for decades. Through repeated retellings across centuries, the snake’s form and meaning have continuously transformed.

This paradox—of being fixed in place yet constantly changing—echoes the violence implicit in the act of painting: the painter’s power to arrest a motif as an object of consumption. It also resonates with Okubo’s long-standing exploration of the “shifting motif.” In a new series of paintings featured in this exhibition, the same image is rendered across panels of different sizes, layered one atop another to create a visual tension between visibility and concealment, stability and transformation. In her new Mistake series of drawings, where previous marks are overwritten or obscured, Okubo visualizes her own presence in the act of correction. These works prompt viewers to question what is drawn and why it is hidden, and what constitutes a “mistake” in the first place.

The snakes of Okubo’s contemporary imagination—riddled with instability, contradiction, and uncertainty—continue to entangle themselves with the viewer’s memory and senses. One image emerges, then slips away, only to return as something else.

Left: Woman with a plate, 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas panel, 1455 × 1120 mm
Right: That wound, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas panel, 1303 × 970 mm

Concurrent exhibition: “project N 99 Saya Okubo”
Dates: 7/11 (Fri.) – 10/2 (Thu.), 2025
Hours: 11:00 – 19:00 (Last Admission: 18:30)
Closed on Mon. (In the case of a national holiday, the following Tuesday)
Venue : Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (3-20-3 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo)
More info: https://www.operacity.jp/en/ag/exh/upcoming_exhibitions/

horseback riding, 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas panel, 1455 × 1120 mm