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Rumiko Hagiwara "lures the viewer into a story of transformation in which a common seashell travels from the beaches of her homeland Japan to Europe. Over time it loses its shades and mutates into the contemporary shadeless corporate logo of Shell. She intertwines the story of the shell with the story of the Western shades and shadows which traveled in the opposite direction, to inflate the clear-lined images of Japanese paintings. It all relates to her own travel from Japan to Europe and the confusing cultural translations she encounters and explores. Her attempt to bring back the shell’s lost shadows is a nostalgic gesture that opens up a narrative of a frail seashell that has grown into a representational icon of the world’s largest oil company. Hagiwara uses nostalgia to evaluate both the notion of origin and the notion of progress."