The artwork, titled “Collection”, was created by Tetsuya Ishida in 1998. This piece is a part of the Surrealism art movement and falls under the genre of symbolic painting.
In the artwork, a group of individuals, dressed in formal attire, observe a scene where a worker, wearing protective clothing and gloves, appears to be assembling or disassembling a human being. The setting is a traditional Japanese tatami room, adding a cultural context to the piece. The individual being operated upon is encased in a white cooler-like container, symbolically suggesting a commodity, and part of the person’s body is enclosed in packaging that resembles modern electronics or household appliances. This juxtaposition of human and machine parts underlines themes of dehumanization and the commodification of human life, reflecting the social and existential anxieties characteristic of Ishida’s work.
