YAHATA Harumi
I am often asked, "What is the image of your work? The reason is that it is necessary for people to understand the characteristics of dyeing and weaving (crafts).
Dyeing and weaving are both complicated, with a wide variety of materials and techniques, and the processes are long and complex. In other words, a product cannot be made unless it is adapted to the materials and processes involved. Even if you have an image you want to express first, there are things that cannot be done with dyeing and weaving materials and techniques, and unexpected and irrational things can happen. In the past, I was troubled by this. Because I have been educated that art is "first of all, there is an image.
However, the more I learned about the characteristics of the field of dyeing and weaving, the more I began to think that there might be something more important than "image. For example, weaving used to be a handwork of farm women during the off-season. As in the case of textiles named after regions such as Tanba cloth and Kawachi cotton, weaving was a craft of the common people of the region. These were everyday items woven with a little ingenuity using ready-made threads. There is no preceding image to express something.
However, when I entered an art college 40 years ago, the genre of crafts was aimed at art. From among the craftsmen who fired tea bowls on Gojozaka in Kyoto, an avant-garde group emerged, aiming for "ceramics as expression. Fiber art," a form of art that uses fibers, was also born. Thanks to these artists, Japanese crafts have been able to break away from the hierarchy, and I think this is a great achievement.
On the other hand, as kôgei became increasingly artistic and gained a passport as art, some critics warned, "It is painful to see kôgei works that once belonged to the past incorporated into the system of fine arts and housed in museums.
This is what has happened over the past half century. To return to the subject again, since when did I abandon the motive of "image" or "expressing myself"? I realized that I did not have such motives. Instead, I decided to create the rich world that is possible through "dyeing cloth. Then, what is this richness?
To answer this question, I would like to use the words "diversity" and "versatility. It means to be diverse, to not be narrowed down, and to be versatile. Dyeing" is an area that spans tradition, cutting edge, art, crafts, design, interior design, and fashion. It took me 30 years to realize that art and everyday objects are not so far apart. The boundaries are color-coded but continue gently. And this change in my "view of craft" should not be confined to individuals, but is a gradation of the times.
1980 BA in Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts,Kyoto,Japan
1982 MA in Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts, Kyoto,Japan
present Professor, Graduate School（C0rrespondence Education）Arts Studies KYOTO UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
Imura Art Gallery, Kyoto ('03, '05、’07、’11)
Gallery Nishikawa, Kyoto ('01, '03, '05)
Komatsu kraft space、Akita ('06)
Takashimaya nihonnbashi、Tokyo('08)
Gallery Nakamura, Kyoto ('94, '00)
Gallery Maronie, Kyoto ('87, '89, '92)
Kyoto City University of Arts
Kyoto University of Art and Design
Kyoto Prefecture
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1991 Art Festival-Kyo, Neo-Classical Spatial Studies (Iwaki Residence, Kyoto)
1994 Contemporary Dyeing (The National Museum of Art, Osaka)
1995 The 1st Premonition of Beauty (Takashimaya Department Store, Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama)
1997 Kyoto Art New Artist Award (Kyoto Shijo Gallery)
1997 Shiga Annual (The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga)
1997 In the Beginning, There is Material - Jomon (Gallery Raku, Kyoto)
1997 20 Years of the National Museum of Art, Osaka, (The National Museum of Art, Osaka)
1999 Kyo Yuzen: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo)
2001 The Beauty of the East (Mumyo House, Koseiin/Kyoto) - 2002
2001 Contemporary Cloth (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
2002 Contemporary Crafts: Materials and Formative Thinking (Petronas Gallery,Malaysia)
2003 Advancing Crafts (Hiroshima Civic Plaza)
2002 Crafts Group Exhibition [I] [II] (Nihonbashi, Kyoto, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya Takashimaya Department Store) - 2003
2005 5th INTERNATIONAL TEXTILE TRIENNIAL EXHIBITION (Tournal, Belgium)
2005 Arts and Crafts (Dronningroon, Denmark) organized by the State of Dronningroon)
2007 Asahi Craft, invited by (Hankyu Department Store, Osaka, Japan)
2007 From
2008 Six Women Artists - Picture Scrolls of the Dynasties (Dyeing and Seiryukan, Kyoto) (Furukawa Art Museum, Nagoya)
2008 Decoration-Collection Exhibition (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Crafts Gallery)
2008 GARDEN (Obara School Espace, Tokyo)
2008 Kyoto Art Biennale (The Museum of Kyoto)
2010 The Development and Present of Modern Dyeing (Tsukuba Museum of Art, Ibaraki)
2013 Contemporary KOGEI Styles in Japan (Morigami Museum, USA)
Organized by Agency for Cultural Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2015 flower (Takashimaya Nihombashi Gallery X, Tokyo)
2015 Rimpa School 400th Anniversary Exhibition (The Museum of Kyoto, Kyoto) (Takashimaya Nihombashi, Tokyo)
2015 Contemporary NOREN (Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto)
2016 Innovative Crafts: Tradition, Avant-garde and Contemporary (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
2018 Reading Wachuan (Wachuan, Kyoto) Graduate School Collaborative Research
2019 Dyeing and Weaving in Kyoto (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto)
2020 Commemorative Exhibition of the Kyoto Art and Culture Prize (The Museum of Kyoto)
2021 Colors (Kyoto University of Arts, Galerie Aube)
2023 The 24th Seiryuten Biennale (Seiryukan, Kyoto), consecutive exhibits since 1992