January 17th of this year was a memorable day. I applied in March last year and then forgot about it, but I received an email from SINGULART saying that I had been approved. At that time, I really couldn’t believe it and thought, “Maybe this is spam or a scam email?”

In the latter half of last month, I was calmly thinking about overseas expansion. It’s not so much whether the email from SNGULART is real, but whether sending my work overseas is what I really want. about it. If my work is bought by a Japanese person, I may be able to see it at any time by writing a letter to that person. But if I send it overseas, I’ll never be able to see it again. I imagined that people who wanted to see my works in Japan might be disappointed.

However, as we entered the new year, the Great Noto Earthquake occurred on January 1st, and the next day, on January 2nd, a plane went up in flames. Corruption issues among politicians were exposed one after another, and economic damage was caused. Japanese people seem to be exhausted by anxiety. People may be more interested in incidents, accidents, and celebrity scandals than in art and culture.

There is no guarantee that the customers who have purchased my works so far will collect more of my works. I need to increase the number of people who are interested in my work more than ever.

If I hold a solo exhibition at a gallery like I have done in the past, about 500 people from the Tokyo area come to see it, about 20 of them buy my work, and 2-3 of them buy it. He may continue to collect works. However, in order to do so, it will cost about 200,000 yen, including DM shipping costs, transportation costs, accommodation costs, and eating out during that time. During the exhibition period, I will not be able to create anything at all. And since my usual lifestyle habits are disrupted, it takes a lot of effort to get back to the rhythm of my life once the solo exhibition is over.

I’ve been using that method for about 22 years, from 1995 to 2017, so I’ve been thinking that I need to change to a new method that is less burdensome for me.

The idea is to use overseas art marketplaces. There are various platforms out there, but the one I chose is SINGULART. SINGULART is an online premium shop founded in 2017 based in Paris, France, and currently has approximately 10000 artists from all over the world, and the site is used in 80 countries. Impressed by the concept of “empowering artists around the world”, we decided to officially register on February 1st.

At first, I exhibited 5 works on the silver plan, which costs about 5,000 yen a month. The system for managing your own work is very well-developed, and the terms and conditions, tutorials such as know-how and Q&A, and staff support are well-developed, and the more you learn about it, the more you can feel the passion of the operator. The shop scenes are multilingual, and the Japanese translations are very natural.

From February 14th, I took the plunge and changed to the Gold plan. The Gold Plan costs 10,000 yen a month, but you can see access analysis of shop viewers on the management screen and receive various tips and advice for selling your works. Specifically, it has a function to check whether the resolution of the posted image is accurate and whether it can be transmitted on SNS etc.

To date, 7 works have been uploaded. As I uploaded images of my works, my motivation to create them increased.

Introducing my work to the world, even if just a little, will be the main focus of my future activities. I strongly hope to meet new people and gain new opportunities through the Internet.