EXHIBITIONS

Aiko Miyanaga

soramimimisora(hearing things), Sapporo 2014
Aiko MIYANAGA
Photo：Keizo Kioku

Aiko Miyanaga is known for creating works that change over time, including naphthalene casts of everyday items like shoes, clocks, toys, and keys placed inside acrylic cases, and installations incorporating crystallized salt extracted from the sea or rivers. In her works employing naphthalene, the material is sublimated (transformed directly from solid to gas without passing through a liquid phase) at room temperature and gradually condenses into crystals inside the case, but even after losing its solid form it continues to evolve, retaining its constituent parts and mass. Miyanaga’s “changing sculptures” are charged with an ephemeral beauty, and whisper of lingering time trapped within their cases’ confines, acting powerfully on the viewer’s memory. Her work of recent years has broadened its scope, opening a window on a constantly shifting world woven of invisible connections, rendering visible the hidden harmonies within dissonance.

Miyanaga’s solo exhibitions include “House” (Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, 2013) and “Nakasora – the Reason for Eternity” (The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2012), and group exhibitions include the Towada Oirase Art Festival (2013) and the Aichi Triennale 2010. She received the Nissan Art Award 2013 Grand Prize and the 22nd Gotoh Memorial Foundation New Artist Award in 2011.

At SIAF 2014, drawing inspiration from springs that well up from deep underground in the upstream section of the Toyohira River, one of Sapporo’s primary waterways, Miyanaga presents a new sound installation employing ceramics from her Soramimimisora (Hearing Things) series. The installation gives concrete form to faint and unpredictable sounds emitted by ceramic vessels after firing, and evokes multiple layers of associations surrounding the source of the river that has nurtured Sapporo for centuries, the rise of the city, and the ceaseless flow of time. On the second floor of the former Takeo Arishima Residence, she also shows book-key-, a work which is a naphthalene cast of a book containing a key.

http://www.aiko-m.com/