KARASUMARU YUMI

Based in Bologna, Italy, Karasumaru has explored themes such as “homeland” and “history” through painting and performance, moving between personal sensibility and collective memory. The title of this exhibition, Facing Histories, signals an effort to reconsider the relationship between history and the present. Here, “history” is understood not as something completed in the past, but as a living issue that continues to affect us even now.

Drawing on multiple elements as clues, including Edo-period art, memories of war, and portraits of unnamed figures in old photographs, this exhibition creates a space where different timelines intersect. What emerges is not a continuous, progressive view of history, but multiple “histories”: fragments marked by forgetting, rupture, and distortion.

In the washi drawings made from a century-old family funeral group portrait and photographs of a family who travelled to a village called Dohwa in colonial Korea, the presence of people who left no name in history comes quietly into view. Though they belong to the past, they appear before us who live in the present as people who undeniably lived. The accompanying Learning from the past series centres on works rooted in Japanese art of the Edo period, while in some pieces, different cultural influences, including European medieval and Renaissance art, intersect. Shaped by a perspective cultivated through life in Italy, the works move beyond binary oppositions such as East and West, or past and present, presenting history as layered and multifaceted – light yet also charged with tension.

Karasumaru’s work does not seek to explain history. Rather, it reaches towards perspectives that have gone unheard and asks us to reconsider what it means to see, and to face, at all. Instead of romanticising the past, the exhibition invites us to rethink history as a contemporary issue. It aims to become a place for thought and dialogue. At a time when tension and conflict continue around the world, we hope it offers viewers a chance to pause and look closely again at the relationship between history and the present. Although the exhibition period is shorter than usual, we hope many will have the opportunity to see it.

Performance Event:

“The Storyteller 〜 Onodaの記憶 – The Last Samurai”

June 6 (Sat.) 16:00～/ 18:00～

(Each performance approx. 15 minutes) Free admission, no booking required