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RAELEEN KAO

Teke Teke

Intaglio

12'' x 12''

2016

A victim of a practical joke, Teke-teke was a young girl who fell onto the tracks of the Shinkansen high speed railway in Japan, which severed her body in half. She currently haunts train stations in Japan as an onryo, a vengeful spirit, dragging her truncated torso around on her hands and elbows and brandishing a scythe, resulting in the teke-teke sound heard by her victims before she appears. In some situations, she will ask, “Where are my legs?” before chasing down those who answer incorrectly, and slicing them in half with her scythe in order to replicate her own death. In this case, the answer, “on the Meishin line,” occasionally allows the individual to escape.