Based in Tokyo, Japanese artist Azu Kimura creates multidimensional works/sculptures, and site-specific installations using locally sourced natural materials.
In being there, the artist presents us with a series of light, soft sculptures made with Hordeum jubatum over a metal mesh. While these pieces show an appealing texture and ask to be touched, they might be destroyed by the finger of the toucher, due to their natural fragility. This possible interaction makes us reflect on the relationship between humans and plants, and recognize the reactions that plants cause in us.
The beginning
Azu Kimura: I started being there as an existence that stands between me and the forest, which I suddenly find while walking in the mountains. This series of works, made with Hordeum jubatum in a metal mesh structure, is very fragile and vulnerable to its context and natural elements, such as humidity and insects. Objects integrate and move – the coordinates have moved from where they grew up.
Species & Ecology of Plants
Azu Kimura: While making my work, I am delighted to find out about the species and ecology of plants. At the same time, I came to think that the perspective of a plant can only be known by using our five senses or tools that supplement it. We can’t understand the true picture of the plant itself, no matter how much I think about it. That’s why I thought I had to know our senses and perceptions as well.
The emphasis is on spending time with plants and insects.
Natural Spheres
Azu Kimura: I like the idea that all living things in Umwelt of Uexküll have a sphere that surrounds them.
Through my work, I think I’m looking for a point of contact between the human sphere and the spheres of animals and plants. It is a point of contact that I can obtain by repeatedly using Hordeum jubatum, and it is also a point of contact with this world, such as collecting the colors of petals and deciphering them side by side.
Last fall, I made a work in which a petal growing on the roadside was attached to a spider’s web and the spider removed it. The reaction of other creatures that seem to be completely different in the world is interesting.
Interview with Azu Kimura | Photography Azu Kimura, Keisuke Inoue and Yume.