She is an artist who loves playing with words: seeing the connections between words like“text” and “textile”. Normally, language is systematized by categorizing perceptions of the world. However, she quickly changes direction just a moment before she “grasps” something, and carries on producing work while being inspired continuously by the things surrounding her, even when she is lost in translation. To be honest, her ideas, which seemed like word games, sometimes lost me when we discussed them. Nevertheless, from “rice cultivation” which was one of the concepts of Asahi AIR 2016, she was led to the Italian word for rice, “riso”, which also means “laughter”. Then, she found the smiling Japanese “Okame” masks interesting, and set up her project to sew three- dimensional self portraits into them, playing with the idea of the anonymity of masks. That was an interesting and original process.
But her true charm resides in her craft-work. Her free flying and conceptually unbound thoughts were, by sewing, knitting and hardening the material by hand, almost unconsciously arranged. Her performance work “Riso Rosa Blessing” changed Kamado Shrine into a complete different space, as if she were threading together all the key words that had come to her during her stay in Omachi. The two dimensions – text and textile – and her style of going back and forth between those words kept her thread hearth exhibition space full of free inspiration and the warmth of hand craft-work.

ASAHI AIR Review

So s e i S at o ,

A s a h i  A I R  c o o r d i n at o r