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They kneel, not knowing what they are waiting for.
The floor glimmers with teeth made of patience.
At the center, a soft god, golden and melting— no bait, no promise, only fragrance.
The closer one leans, the quieter the air becomes.
Perhaps devotion is another form of hunger.
A butter Maneki-neko sits on a porcelain plate at the center of a floor covered with mousetraps.
The traps are empty—no bait, no promise—yet their presence produces an immediate unease.
To approach the work, viewers must kneel or lean close to the ground, entering a posture that resembles devotion even though they have not chosen it.
The butter slowly softens under the lights, releasing the sour, slightly unpleasant smell of leftover food.
The scent travels low, pulling bodies downward toward something they would never normally approach.
The result is a choreography shaped not by faith but by discomfort, fear, and curiosity.
By placing the “bait” in the open center rather than on the traps themselves, the installation displaces the logic of lure and capture.
The cat becomes a soft, unstable idol, while the traps—stripped of function—become an architecture of imagined danger.
The work reveals how systems can generate gestures that look like submission: a ritual formed accidentally, in the space between repulsion and desire.
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