Internationally recognised photographer and film director Mika Ninagawa is known for her vibrant, hyperrealistic works, often featuring lush florals and dreamlike imagery. With ‘Lights of the beyond, Shadows of this world’ at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, she presents her largest collaborative exhibit to date in the Kansai region together with creative team EiM.
Inspired by the ancient city’s unique blend of history and modernity, Ninagawa explores the themes of light and shadows, life and the beyond. The exhibition comprises ten distinct installations, each flowing seamlessly into the next, creating a mesmerising, picture-scroll-like journey for visitors.
Once inside the exhibition, expect to be enveloped in a world of vibrant colours and textures, including in Whispers of Light, Dreams of Color, which utilises 1,500 strands of shimmering crystals to create a dream-like realm of a sunshower frozen in time. The garlands which string the crystals together feature photographs of butterflies and pendants shaped like eyes that sway in the wind as visitors walk through.
Another highlight of the exhibition would be Dreams of the beyond in the abyss, a spatial work which takes visitors into a dark void, only to soon uncover a heavenly flower garden within the pits of the underworld. Ninagawa’s works, which invite introspection through her use of light and shadows, evoke the coexistence of beauty and evils that envelop our world – and invite visitors to reflect and come to terms with themselves just as they are.
Be sure to check the event website for more details.
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