44
“44” is a series developed around the theme of a key location appearing in “Reflection”-namely the train stop number 44 that enables visitors to reach the hotel- and the characters staying at the hotel . The number 44 is a reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book, The Little Prince. In the original version of the book, the Little Prince is described as once being so sad that he watched the sunset 44 times in a row. Saint-Exupéry happened to pass away at 44-year-old, in 1944, 2 years after having written the Little Prince. Despite 44 being a bad luck number in many cultures, including in Japan from which the fabrics used in this series are sourced from, precisely because of its similarities in pronunciation with the word "death", 44 is used here as a positive symbol. It celebrates the connection between the real and the imaginary, as it somehow magically seems to tie fiction and reality together: one could imagine that the fictional Little Prince´ s sadness was caused by the disappearance of his creator. So, 44 can here be interpreted as the poetic link between the real and the imaginary, and how the latter can sometimes take over reality.
