The artistic work of 95-year-old Takako Saito is imbued with the idea of playfulness. Already in the 1950s, as a young teacher in Japan, Saito realized how important playing is in society and joined the local art education movement “Sozo Biiku Undou”. The aim of this reform movement was to infuse post-fascist, post-war Japan with a playful subtext and involve people in creative dialog. Playing, chance and the participation of the viewer are also part of the principles of the Fluxus movement, which Takako Saito joined in New York in the 1960s. Today, she is one of the few living Fluxus protagonists. Saito has developed a unique artistic language in which she creates a space for herself, her viewers, and fellow players where age, gender, cultural differences, and language barriers do not play a role. With her chess games, do-it-yourself works, and performances, she opens up participatory possibilities free of any kind of achievement-oriented thinking for the audience, who usually are only observers.
The Fluxus artists’ artistic engagement with chess, which can be traced back to Duchamp, also left its mark on Takako Saito. Since moving to New York in the 1960s, she has created numerous chess sets with a wealth of variations and ideas that is hard to exceed by any standards. The virtuosity of her craftsmanship of the woodwork points to Saito’s Japanese origins. Saito’s emphatically playful approach to the game that is so laden with tradition, frees up the classic game figures from their hierarchies and replaces them with cubes and other objects that can be smelled, heard or felt.
