Even as They Fade | Sakura Momma

Sakura Momma has spent several years exploring the material, gestural and ritual dimensions of embroidery. In this installation, a transparent organza veil embroidered with glass beads is gradually undone by a mechanical device that slowly withdraws the thread over the course of the installation. In unravelling what was sewn by hand, the artist makes perceptible the invisible gestures accumulated within each stitch. Each falling bead reveals the existence of the stitch that held it, bringing the time of making into the present.

As this happens, new forms emerge: sounds, threads gathering on the floor, perforations, shadows and traces left in the fabric. Although the entire surface is embroidered, the transparency of the material prevents the work from presenting itself as an immediately legible image. Its transformations become perceptible only gradually, through attention paid to the sound of a falling bead, to shifts in the light, or to a change in viewpoint.

Refusing both the idea of a finished form and that of its destruction, the artist regards each moment of the exhibition as a transitory state of the work. The materials do not disappear; they change place, visibility and function. Detachment spreads across the whole of the veil, with no single point of origin that can be identified, like a fog slowly lifting.

Sakura Momma (Japan) is in residence with the support of the Musashino Art University