The art work was created for the “Art Stage Singapore” , the biggest contemporary art fair in Asia, which took place in Singapore in January 2013. The three paintings depict a situation that happened in the Shonan Botanical Gardens in Singapore, during World War II, when Singapore was under Japanese occupation (1942-1945).

Yasuka Goto was born in Hiroshima in 1982. When she was a child, her family told her stories about what her grandfather and granduncle experienced during the war. Inspired by those stories, she later worked on a painting on young soldiers in World War II. She is, however, not focused on the war in her paintings. Throughout her art works, she purely focuses on people who she respects for their hard work.

For example, for the exhibition “Yukagaki-Gensun” (full-scale drawing on the floor) at the former Namura shipyard, she painted engineers who worked there in the 1960s.

For the art work “Empty revolver on desk” , in turn, she focused on three people – Japanese botanist Dr. Koriba, his Japanese Singaporean assistant Alfonso, and British botanist Dr. Corner – who worked together to protect the Shonan Botanical Gardens, despite the fact that their home countries were at war with each other. As usual, she research about the background. For this work, Goto went to Aomori prefecture to meet a resercher of Dr. Koriba before starting to paint and also when to Singapore to research after painting continuously. Her research reports will be shown at the exhibition.

Yasuka Goto recently received the “Sakuya Konohana Award” , the most prestigious cultural award which is granted by Osaka government.