Photo: Ufer! Art Documentary

After exhibiting an oil painting of layered Prussian blue for her high school graduation work, Fukumoto Shihoko went on to study Western oil painting at university, but she felt at odds with the traditional confines of the Western expressive method
and continued to search for her own artistic expressive path. In 1976, while working at the Tatsumura Textile Art Research Institute in Kyoto’s Nishijin district, Fukumoto Shihoko met indigo-dyed threads and there encountered a blue that suited her own sensibility. It is difficult for the coarsely-structured indigo to penetrate fabric, and instead it develops its color through a reaction with the air. A process of trial and error has led Fukumoto Shihoko to produce her indigo blue by reduction process of hydrosulphite using natural indigo from Tokushima. In recent years, she has continued to work in a complex combination of the shibori expression she has been working on since the late 1970s, together with her exploration since the late 1980s of the effects of dye blotting and blurring. The underlying commonality lies in the importance of cloth’s role as a support for expression, and the sense of spaciality that emanates from it.

In the 2000s, Shihoko witnessed at first hand changes in the supply and demand for cloth, such as the replacement of hemp-woven mosquito net fabrics, which had previously allowed for various forms of expression possible, by synthetic fibers, and a decline in materials and techniques generally. Around the same time, she also came across rustic old yamagimon cloth, made on the remote island of Tsushima. Centuries ago in the mid-Edo period there had been an explosive spread of cotton as a clothing material, but even after this, pre-cotton hand-made natural fabrics (hemp, paper cloth, wisteria cloth, various kinds of bark cloth, etc.), nurtured in the specific environments of the various regions, continued to be used in work clothes until the early Showa period of the 20th century. The yamagimon cloth was one such example. Shihoko took the yamagimon work kimonos to pieces, applied minimal dye work to them, and sewed them together into flat surfaces to reconstruct them into wall hangings. She says that indigo dyes surprisingly well on such cloth. Face to face with this old cloth and in physical contact with it, she has found herself questioning the purpose of the act of dyeing as she strives to bring out the inherent shape of each piece almost as if in collaboration with it. For the first time, work clothes made of natural fabrics are also exhibited here alongside this work.

Back in the 1980s Fukumoto Shihoko found herself fascinated by the lustre of fabric from cotton grown in Turfan, China and
woven into satiny cloth in Japan’s Tango area. Confronting the laws of nature, Shihoko sought out points that were like a light source, creating both small dots and large shining dots by a layered shibori technique. Recently, she has been working on a series called “Ginga” (Galaxy), collages of dots of various sizes on pieces of indigo-dyed cotton cloth known as boro, made from cast-off material left over from the weaving process that had been collected and made into cloth and used with care in daily life until around the early Showa period. Also on display in this exhibition is a work titled “Hokuto” (North Star), which depicts the starry sky over Aomori visible during the period of the exhibition. The blue of the indigo invites us to a place where the ingenuity of those of long ago and the creativity of Fukumoto Shihoko combine to transcend time and space.

Translation: Meredith McKINNEY