Hitomi Uchikura: Poetry in moons and mirrors
Aomi Okabe (curator, art critic)
Send the smell of the moon (1953 autumn)
Send the smell to the moon (1962 winter) ¹
This spring, I had the opportunity to see a substantial solo exhibition of Hitomi Uchikura's work in Japan.² Her works stood quietly amid the tactile warmth of wooden pillars and door panels, and the pure white of walls and sliding shoji-doors, of this old family home in traditional style. It had been given new life as a gallery but retained vestiges of rough-hewn craftsmanship, while the soft natural light pouring through the translucent glass of the tall windows brought a hint of vitality to the generous space with its exposed timber frame ceiling, and a subtle oscillation to the works of art.
The five pieces of the series Lumière, in the format of large, elegant kakemono scrolls, had a stately air, their congregations of countless circles calling to mind the bubbles of life’s birth in the oceans, or the sight of constellations in space. Tuning into the work, out of the blue I recalled Yoko Ono’s “smell instructions.” No doubt Ono would instruct me, as I looked at this work, to “imagine a night sky with a thousand moons.” Confronted by the beauty of a milky night sky filled with moons, the mighty sun might well have to abandon its throne...
Hitomi Uchikura’s (b. 1956, Kagoshima) explorations of light began over 30 years ago, in the moment when spring sunlight happened to fall on a pile of mirror shards left by a window in her studio, unleashing endless circles of light. Yet this experience of almost divine inspiration did not bear fruit immediately, and the artist’s doubts about herself continued to deepen. The solution she came up with for breaking this personal impasse was unusual, to say the least.
Deciding that the best way to objectivize her human self would be to live with an animal,
she bought a pony foal. Horses are noble creatures, and this one was fiercely independent,
in the manner of a cat. In the process of raising it Uchikura moved to Nasu, a place with
echoes of her home Kagoshima. There she remains today, hard at work in her studio roofed with a geodesic Buckminster Fuller dome.
Uchikura speaks of the beauty of nature, of being mesmerized by “all the spiderwebs strung around in summer just before dawn, and the dew glittering as it starts to grow light.” In the depths of the lenses in Bright Cells dwell visions of sparkling, jostling dewdrops likewise. This silver kaleidoscopic magic is the product of broken mirror glass glued to the interior of a hollow sphere wrapped in sheepskin, forming something resembling a sea creature.
“Break your mirror and scatter the pieces over different countries. Travel and collect the pieces and glue them together again….” ³ Thus Ono entices us on a journey of destruction and rebirth. One first destroys the mold for the self, then with assistance of some sort, is born again, covered in wounds. Perhaps thanks to the pony that had lived with her for some 25 years, Uchikura has matured into an international artist whose activities now extend beyond Japan to the likes of France and Germany, with works from her many innovative series dotted across the globe.
Her new series Mirage is an attempt at something larger in scale. Mirrors are concealed behind Lumière-type drawings where the paper between the circular designs has been cut away, generating reflections in its diaphanous gaps. The works reflect their positioning in space as well as the people inside it. If one moves around while viewing it feels cosmic, akin to gazing down on the earth from the heavens through clouds.
As one of the young women artists who in the 1980s were searching for new ways in painting and decorative art, Uchikura was taught by Mono-ha artist Lee Ufan at art school, and refined her love of materials. After so many years, Uchikura had forgotten completely, but as a postgrad student she produced minimalist works in which she dripped spots of water mixed with minute amounts of pigment and glue onto large sheets of washi paper, producing an irregular relief. The relief of the Lumière works is produced with the help of water likewise, and could be termed an extension of that.
Hitomi Uchikura continues on her artistic journey in the exploration of light, not giving up despite knowing that it will never have an end. While on it, she enjoys engaging in the dialogues that evolve between her work and people all over the world.
1. Yoko Ono, Smell Piece I and Smell Piece II, in Grapefruit, section 3: Event (reprint London: Sphere Books, 1971, p. 54).
2. “Reborn in New Luster,” solo exhibition of works by Hitomi Uchikura in Takemasa House, Saitama, May 3–25, 2025 (staged to mark the renovation of Takemasa House, originally built in 1881).
3. Yoko Ono, Collecting Piece III, in Grapefruit, section 5: Object (op. cit., p. 103).
