The Nine Halves Cat (storyboard), 2023
Mixed media
Commissioned by TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol for Ich bin anders, weil ich kann das. Stranger belongs to me
Lucas Odahara’s work for the exhibition is based on a children’s book that he wrote for his godchild and was published in Portuguese in Brazil in 2023. It plays with the idea of the nine lives of a cat and tells the story of Roux, a cat who cannot be assigned to a single identity. One day the other cats in the neighborhood miss Roux and go looking for her individually, each pointing out the one characteristic they have in common with her when describing Roux. Their search fails until they realize that all of their features belong to Roux at the same time and that she is still simply a “whole” cat (not nine “halves”): like any other cat, she hides in a tree. In the collages that Odahara creates here, he moves between Roux’s story and his own, taking us on an intimate journey of self- encounter.
Exhibition view, TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, 2023. Photo: Günter Kresser
Lucas Odahara