SHIHO FUJIWARA

The artist’s DNA, as well as the life they have lived—experiences, character, and soul—naturally emerge in the lines drawn and the forms of paper. Ever since I became fascinated by the limitless possibilities of ink and Washi paper, I have continued to explore uncharted territory: the lines created through folding paper, the changing expressions produced by the varying degrees to which ink particles permeate the surface, and other processes rarely explored before.

My grandfather, a Nihonga painter, once left me with these words: “If you wish to create the work you truly want, and not flatter others, you must have a profession that allows you to stand on your own.” Perhaps it was this conviction that led me to become a nurse, a profession that inevitably confronts one with many different views of life and death. From my early years at Kobe City Medical Center until my retirement at the age of sixty-five, my daily encounters with patients and my engagement with the monochrome world of ink and Washi paper formed two inseparable parts of my life—both of them, in their own way, a kind of practice. The experiences that have become part of my very being, together with the shifts in my inner reflections, may have taken on new forms and found life within my works mediated through ink and Washi paper.

Drawing with a brush, I treat not only the surface of Washi paper but also what lies beyond it as a field of expression. In the crease lines of folded paper, I inscribe my will as an artist. The focus of this exhibition is the “line”—simple, yet precisely because of that, risky. In alliance with paper, which unfolds freely through the act of folding, it forms a world that is both austere and profound, rich with the tactile presence of life. I would be delighted if viewers could read from these “lines” the various signals that transcend materiality—even a sense of speed.

__Shiho Fujiwara