Infinity

I focus on the discrepancy between the contour lines of the wood grain that emerge on the surface of my sculptures and the silhouettes formed by light and shadow. Through the subtle fluctuations born from this discrepancy, my work explores the multifaceted nature of things and the ambiguity of perception.
My works draw on a range of memories and images: the visual language of stop-motion animation, which I have been drawn to since childhood; impressions received from people and the environments surrounding them; and the imagery of stages, literature, and other sources evoked by these impressions.

“Filled with Emptiness” is the series where humans’ or animals’ faces are replaced by the spout of vessels. I use clay for pottery and create hollows by hand. Even without facial expression, you can sense the presence of each of them from their posture and manner. “Filled with Emptiness” doesn’t mean there’s nothing. It rather means there are plenty of possibilities. By keeping the face left empty, which expresses the characteristics, inverts the ground and the figure, creating an opportunity for our images to expand.

Woodcraft artist Shuji Nakagawa and Nakagawa Mokkougei Hira Studio merge contemporary artistic thinking with traditional woodworking techniques, reframing the ki-oke (hoop-bound wooden vessel) as an autonomous structural form.

wooden Oke tea room (2024) is a large-scale work created in collaboration with young artisans as a foundational step toward passing traditional skills to the next generation. Using Japanese cypress wood and the traditional Tagajime technique, they created a space with the unique warmth and aroma of wooden Oke and the expansive space provided by the arch structure, creating a tea room space filled with tranquility and peacefulness. By pushing beyond conventional scale, the project embodies a flexible approach to creation free from fixed preconceptions. Looking ahead to cross-disciplinary collaborations, it seeks to unlock the infinite possibilities of the ki-oke for the next century and beyond.

Within this extraordinary space, guests are invited to enjoy a tea service hosted by Masashi Harashima, representative of Chiyonoen in Fukuoka. Additionally, Ken Katayama, Master instructor of the Sogetsu HQ, will present an artistic flower arrangement (ikebana) created in dialogue with the works of Shuji Nakagawa and photographer Ichigo Sugawara.

My Own Refuge
— The Memory of Place, the Place of Memory —

My Own Refuge begins with the artist’s memories of her homeland, reconstructing the familiar landscapes, fragments, and sensations accumulated through the course of growing up. These personal memories extend beyond individual experience, overlapping with memories shared by a city, a place, and even a generation.

Rather than reconstructing a history grounded in fact, the work explores how memory shifts and transforms through its entanglement with imagination, time, and reality. By layering and reconfiguring familiar landscapes, it brings to the surface “strata of constructed time” that exist between reality and fiction.

The “Refuge” that emerges within this space shaped by memory is not merely a place of shelter, but an inner realm capable of holding memory, imagination, and emotion.

And the work poses a question to each of us: when we leave behind a place that has long been familiar to us, what remains in our memory—and what, within us, eventually becomes a place to which we can return?