A Sense for Space

November 29th, 2011 at 08:00am Erica

For the first time in ten years, internationally renowned artist Shihoku Fukumoto is showing her breathtaking Indigo Cube—Mist (1991), a tea ceremony room comprised of indigo-dyed linen, Japanese paper and aluminum. Fukumoto’s work speaks on a material level, referencing generations of traditional dyeing techniques, but also represents an important facet of Japanese culture.

The tea-ceremony has existed in Japan for over a thousand years. It is a place where the ritual of serving tea is elevated to an art form, and each step of the elaborate process is precise and loaded with multifaceted meaning. When I stayed in Japan over the summer, I traveled to Uji, a historic village in the Kyoto area that has specialized in green tea since the twelfth century and boasts the oldest tea shop in Japan. I experienced the reverence and care that goes into preparing this tea while participating in a workshop that taught me how to look at, smell, touch and, of course, taste tea like I never have before. Since then, I have become a devout drinker of tea and have cultivated a newfound appreciation for the quiet moments in my daily life that I can enjoy it. This feeling has been known to the Japanese for ages, making the tea ceremony a time of profound significance.  The sites of these ‘performances’ are equally as important.

Shihoku Fukumoto, Indigo Cube--Mist, 1999 Linen, indigo, Japanese paper, aluminum

Fukumoto understands this concept, constructing Mist as a space of calm and tranquility. Although the work is meant to display a kind of spiritual restraint, it must be noted that the artistic process is both painstaking and complex. Fukumoto used the shibori style of traditional indigo dyeing, which must be done over ten times a day for a period of four to five days. After that is bakashi, tonal gradation dyeing, which takes extreme technique and discipline. Fukumoto chose the color indigo because, in her mind, the shade most profoundly represents the aesthetic of emptiness. This is an apt descriptor, since the very point of the tea ceremony is to leave the outside world, and your troubles, behind you.

Experience Indigo Cube—Mist for yourself this November at MAD’s ‘Beauty in All Things’ show

Entry Filed under: beauty in all things