Leaves fall from trees to the ground and Keiko Miyamori’s Washi paper sheets pile up, overlap, and cover one another to recreate a new skin, an envelope, a shell. A protected space, yet so fragile: like a curtain, a light veil billowing with a breath of air, her sheets of paper possess the power of vulnerability.
These overlapping sheets of paper, or, as in her last exhibition, glued directly to the walls, bear traces: those of the rubbings of tree trunks that the artist carried out for months, a daily practice which she calls Jutaku in Japanese. It is on their surface that Keiko Miyamori’s memory surfaces, recording the lines of the wrinkles and furrows of the trunks by pressing a piece of Washi paper onto them, which she then scrapes with charcoal. From the tree trunk to the Washi paper, made from the tree’s bark, and finally to the charcoal that the artist makes herself from the charcoal obtained by burning the trunk and dead branches: the circle is complete. A century ago, Max Ernst was already practicing the frottage technique, revealing the patterns of nature on the surface: the rays of tree trunks, floorboards, plant veins, and foliage. His visionary insights and boundless imagination did the rest. None of that is present in Keiko Miyamori’s approach, who delivers here a raw and unvarnished version of the technique.
TIME is the name of her project, which began in 2021 as a daily ritual upon learning of her elderly father’s final months of life. Traveling to Japan to stay with him, the artist, then living in New York, conceived a process that would allow her to keep memory of this precious time. Around her and her father, whom she walks with daily in the parks, are trees—guardians of secrets, reassuring presences, colossal beings with lives sometimes spanning several centuries. From these rubbings, a rich archive of several hundred copies remains, which she has carefully collected and preserved in small, handmade glass boxes. Small in size, the washi paper sheets, slipped into her pockets or wallet, numbered and dated, look like talismans.
Capturing the ephemeral while grasping the essential—the multiple layers of extended time: Keiko Miyamori’s personal narrative becomes collective. And the simplicity of her approach allows everyone to make it their own. In the artist’s words, it is about « tracing the passage of time through repetition and accumulation – including the sense of connection with others that time can bring. »
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Photos courtesy Keiko Miyamori, 2026
https://www.keikomiyamori.com/
photographers’ Gallery, Tokyo: https://pg-web.net/exhibition/miyamori-keiko/
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