This shop sells KYOTOGRAPHIE tickets, goods, books and other items, as well as providing information on the exhibition and sightseeing in the area. Please also enjoy the architectural charms of the building as a tangible cultural property designated by Kyoto City. This year, 01 Kazuhiko Matsumura’s exhibition, KYOTOPHONIE information centre and KYOTOPHONIE-related exhibitions are also located in the Information Machiya.

The finalists' photographs of KYOTOGRAPHIE Kids competition will be exhibited during the festival, as well as the finalists' photographs of Petit Bateau Photo contest: [シマシマかくれんぼ] "Striped Hide and Seek."

In the exhibition, there will be a Kids' Corner Space which will welcome the children for free craft activities, including creating their own photobooks using washi and origami paper.
Fee: Free

The KYOTOGRAPHIE KIDS Competition 2023 was open to students from grades 1 to 9 in schools in the Kansai area.
After learning the basics of photography using our school tutorial, children were invited to explore their own interpretation of the word BORDER in a photograph.
We received 392 pictures and selected 52 winning pieces. We will exhibit them during KYOTOGRAPHIE.

2023 Participating schools:
Kyoto City Takakura Elementary School, Kyoto International School, Lycée Français International de Kyoto, St. Agnes’ Junior High School, Osaka YMCA International School, Osaka International School, Doshisha International School - Kyoto, Rakuwakai Jidokan (Otowa Jidokan, Kasan Jidokan, Otsuka Jidokan, Fukakusa Jidokan)

2023 Jury members :
Jennifer Henbest de Calvillo (Art teacher, Osaka International School)
Isao Kisanuki (Art teacher, St. Agnes’ Junior High School)
Gisèle March Art instructor (Doshisha International School - Kyoto)
Wendy Carroll (Art teacher, Kyoto International School)

Japan is a super-aging society: 28.9% of its population are currently elderly,* and in the year 2025, seven million people (1 in 5 elderly people) will suffer from dementia.** And yet many people in Japan do not really know what living with dementia is like or what the symptoms are.
In 2017, photojournalist Kazuhiko Matsumura began interviewing dementia patients along with their families and friends, capturing with his camera their daily lives and changes.
Set in a 100-year old Kyoto machiya, Matsumura’s exhibition is designed to allow visitors to understand the symptoms of dementia and to experience what it is like to live with dementia.
The exhibition title, Heartstrings, was inspired by something the husband of a dementia patient told Matsumura. One day, the man’s wife woke up and could not recognize him anymore, calling him “Father.” In that moment, the husband said, he felt as though the strings between their hearts had been severed.
What does it mean to grow old, and how do we face death, which lies beyond old age? Kazuhiko Matsumura’s work offers us an opportunity to understand dementia, and shines a gentle light on the small pleasures of daily living and the beauty and preciousness of human life that not even dementia takes away from us.

* “2022 White Paper on the Aging Society,” published by the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan.

** Website of the Ministry for Health, Labour and Welfare.

Mabel Poblet is considered one of the rising stars of the Cuban contemporary art scene. As a visual artist, her work is particularly eclectic and uses different techniques such a mixed media, photography, video art, kinetic art, performance art and public art. Her work is in direct relation with her life experience: her identity as a young woman who grew up in Fidel Castro’s Cuba and more generally, her relation to the world.
WHERE OCEANS MEET is an invitation to get acquainted with one of Mabel Poblet’s cherished themes, water, which is also a common denominator between Cuba and Japan and the uniqueness of cultures where islands co-exist with the sea.
Her distinct relationship to the sea has made the element of water a central focus in her work. Most of her series, past or present, use water as a reference. The sea can have many facets, various aspects, different meanings and has the power to convey a multitude of messages. For an islander like the artist, it is the element that keeps her apart from the rest of the world, while at the same time, it is her link to other shores. The sea is a frontier and a bridge, a friend and a nemesis at the same time; a true element of life.

Mabel Poblet makes it her prerogative, as an artist, to not only take the viewers on her journey, opening their minds and hearts to completely new outlooks, but to include them as an integral part of her art.

WHERE OCEANS MEET is there to remind us that we all are like little islands floating in the common sea of mankind.

Escapism, the latest series by Swiss photographer Roger Eberhard, is a voyage through a land of tourist clichés, an invitation to discover a particularity of Swiss culture, and an evocation of various movements in art history, ranging from appropriation art (Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine) to pop art (Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein).
In Switzerland, if you order a coffee in a restaurant or bar, it invariably comes with a portion of cream served in a small brown plastic pot sealed with a thin peel-off foil lid. Since 1968, these lids have always featured a picture.
Of the countless possible photographic genres printed on these lids, Roger Eberhard concentrated on re-photographing landscapes. He used a high-resolution camera to create extreme close-up images. Each shot was taken in the studio and then digitally enhanced to remove any imperfections. The final print is an excessively enlarged reinterpretation of the original photograph.
Escapism is defined as a form of evading reality, an ‘attitude that entails withdrawing from the world and from public life through flight or disillusionment.’ This term is at the heart of Roger Eberhard’s project. With Escapism, the Swiss photographer focuses on a typically Swiss tradition: collecting coffee creamer lids and contemplating the images printed on them.
On the enlarged prints, the CMYK printing pattern appears and disappears according to the viewers’ position. This grid reveals the ink that constitutes the reproduction dot by dot, and indicates the industrial nature of images, as highlighted in the works of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. It also irreparably brings spectators back from their dreamy moment of “escapism” to the reality of the present moment.

In 2022, Gak Yamada participated in the KYOTOGRAPHIE International Portfolio Review and was selected by the portfolio judges as winner of the Ruinart Japan Award. In the fall of the same year, he traveled to Reims in France to take part in the Ruinart artist residency program, held in the world’s oldest champagne house. During the time of harvest, Yamada explored the region and photographed grapes and leaves picked in Ruinart vineyards, stones found in the fields, gold leaf brought from Kyoto, and cellophane biodegradable by bacteria in the soil and the sea.

But what inspired Yamada most during his residency was the Crayères, Ruinart’s underground champagne cellar, an incredible structure built in the remains of an old limestone quarry from ancient medieval times and illuminated by daylight entering through a hole in the ceiling 38 meters above the floor. Here, Yamada suddenly found himself attuned to the grand cycle of life, in the phenomenon of a limestone quarry, formed from the fossilized remains of prehistoric microorganisms, providing the constant temperature and ideal humidity for fermenting champagne made from grapes. His series Life, Cosmic flower was inspired by his musing on the origin of the universe, from the Big Bang to the formation of the stars to the birth of life itself. The sparkle of life found in Yamada’s work seems to celebrate the ephemeral beauty of our world and the existence of all living things.

In addition to photographic works, this exhibition includes a video installation featuring the bubbly sounds of champagne mixed with sound recorded in the Ruinart Crayères.

Internationally-known photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, who captures in film the memories and time that dwell in inanimate objects, chose to collaborate with the young photographer Yuhki Touyama for this exhibition. The works of these two artists overlap in a single exhibition space under the theme “the death of a women close to me.”

Ishiuchi’s Mother’s, a series of photographs of the belongings of her mother, who died in 2002, has been shown around the world. Although the work deals with a personal theme, its repeated exhibition has brought it before the eyes of many people, transforming its motif from “my mother,” to (anyone’s) “mother,” and finally to “woman.”

Yuhki Touyama exhibits photographs she took while caring for her grandmother, who passed away two years ago during the coronavirus pandemic, along with photographs of family members from her 2008 series Line 13. Neither her grandmother nor her mother, who died suddenly last year, appear in the latter photographs, so Touyama decided to photograph herself in her grandmother’s place, in order to feel close to her.

Ishiuchi and Touyama use photography to communicate with loved ones who have passed away. Touyama says that showing her work in the same exhibition space with Ishiuchi’s Mother’s has allowed her to connect with her own mother in a new way. Through the exhibition, the “individuals” depicted in the pictures are liberated from their roles as photographic subjects. They acquire universality, crossing the boundary line into the realm of society.

Ishiuchi Miyako has been creating photographic history for a long time. Her artistic dialogue with Yuhki Touyama, a photographer from another generation, is sure to write a new page in the history of photography.

This exhibition, a dialogue between two female photographers of different generations, is supported by WOMEN IN MOTION, a Kering program that shines a light on the talent of women in the fields of arts and culture. Since 2015, WOMEN IN MOTION has been a platform of choice for helping to change mindsets and reflect on women’s place and recognition across artistic fields.

Internationally-known photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, who captures in film the memories and time that dwell in inanimate objects, chose to collaborate with the young photographer Yuhki Touyama for this exhibition. The works of these two artists overlap in a single exhibition space under the theme “the death of a women close to me.”

Ishiuchi’s Mother’s, a series of photographs of the belongings of her mother, who died in 2002, has been shown around the world. Although the work deals with a personal theme, its repeated exhibition has brought it before the eyes of many people, transforming its motif from “my mother,” to (anyone’s) “mother,” and finally to “woman.”

Yuhki Touyama exhibits photographs she took while caring for her grandmother, who passed away two years ago during the coronavirus pandemic, along with photographs of family members from her 2008 series Line 13. Neither her grandmother nor her mother, who died suddenly last year, appear in the latter photographs, so Touyama decided to photograph herself in her grandmother’s place, in order to feel close to her.
Ishiuchi and Touyama use photography to communicate with loved ones who have passed away. Touyama says that showing her work in the same exhibition space with Ishiuchi’s Mother’s has allowed her to connect with her own mother in a new way. Through the exhibition, the “individuals” depicted in the pictures are liberated from their roles as photographic subjects. They acquire universality, crossing the boundary line into the realm of society.
Ishiuchi Miyako has been creating photographic history for a long time. Her artistic dialogue with Yuhki Touyama, a photographer from another generation, is sure to write a new page in the history of photography.

This exhibition, a dialogue between two female photographers of different generations, is supported by WOMEN IN MOTION, a Kering program that shines a light on the talent of women in the fields of arts and culture. Since 2015, WOMEN IN MOTION has been a platform of choice for helping to change mindsets and reflect on women’s place and recognition across artistic fields.

In the past nine years, Yu Yamauchi has visited Yakushima many times, each time spending a month alone in the island’s primordial forests. Yamauchi began these journeys when he became aware of the anxiety and fear, and distance from nature, he felt when he was surrounded by the great outdoors. What was this fear? Why was he, a human, plagued with anxiety while monkeys and other animals moved about with no such worries? He began wandering through the forests day and night, battling his inner fears while encountering gigantic trees that drew his consciousness to the outer world.

By photographing these trees, Yamauchi says, he connected with them, and the boundaries between himself and the forest and nature became blurred. In these moments he realized that he himself was part of nature, and that it was he who had drawn the boundaries. He had been caught in a projection of his own consciousness. After a night in the forest, going back and forth between the inner (self) and outer (nature) worlds, the trees, which had looked terrifying when lit up by his headlamp, became divine in the light of the morning, and Yamauchi’s fear would evaporate. Yamauchi sought to understand the reality in front of him through his camera. But he says that what his pictures showed was a projection of his inner world.

Since the Meiji era, the Japanese word 自然, pronounced ‘shizen,’ has
been translated as ‘nature,’ and used in opposition to humankind. But there is another, older understanding of 自然, pronounced ‘jinen,’ also written 自ら然る(‘onozukarashikaru’), that encompasses all beings and phenomena, including humans, as they are.

Yamauchi’s series JINEN was created from his daytime and nighttime walks through the forest, taking photos to face his inside and the outside world, accepting things as they are. In JINEN, the relationship between Yamauchi's state of mind and the surrounding forest is visualized as it is, phases of a different dimension, gradually changing. In it one can glimpse human nature, and light and the darkness that shape it.

Founded in 1955, the World Press Photo Foundation aims to show the realities of events around the world. The WPPF holds an annual photography contest, and exhibits the prize-winning works at 100 venues around the world.

The World Press Photo Foundation presents a selection of stories, awarded in the World Press Photo Contests from 2000 to 2021, that highlight the resilience and challenges of women, girls, and communities around the world.

Gender equality and justice is a fundamental human right critical in supporting cohesive societies. Yet women around the world face deeply entrenched inequality and remain underrepresented in political and economic roles. Violence against women prevails as a serious global health and protection issue.

The exhibition conveys the commitment to women’s rights and gender equality and justice. Multiple voices, documented by 17 photographers of 13 different nationalities, offer insights into issues including sexism, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, and access to equal opportunities. The selection of stories explores how women and gender issues have evolved in the 21st century and how photojournalism has developed in the ways of portraying them.

The task of defining happiness has long been delegated to religion, philosophy, or even politics. Today this universal quest seems more and more to be the province of the pharmaceutical industry, which uses all of the tools of the modern age—science, marketing, communications technology—to offer everyone a standardized and automatic response to the ultimate human aspiration. More than ever, to be happy is a duty.

Running through our collective unconscious and pop culture, from Alice in Wonderland to The Matrix, is the leitmotif of the pill: a near-magical solution to difficulties, depression, and all the inadmissible limitations of our human condition. The promise of transformation and healing through chemistry offers a perfect metaphor for a Promethean society that believes only in efficiency, power, youth, and performance. A society where the appearance of happiness is better than happiness itself.

For five years, journalist Arnaud Robert and photographer Paolo Woods travelled the world in search of Happy Pills, those drugs that can repair invisible wounds; those substances that can make people take action, help them to work and to get it up; those formulations that allow the depressed to avoid total collapse; the painkillers that the working poor gobble down so that they can keep on feeding their families. Everywhere, from Niger to the United States, from Switzerland to India, from Israel to the Peruvian Amazon, pills offer immediate solutions where once there were only eternal problems.

The project exists in three different forms: a book, an exhibition, and a film.

Having studied fashion and graphic design in Japan, Yuriko Takagi was working in Europe as a fashion designer when, on one of many trips to Morocco, she became fascinated with the medium of photography.

Like the simultaneous existence of two different worlds, which the title Parallel World suggests, this exhibition comprises two different series shown in parallel in the Nijo-jo Castle Ninomaru Palace Daidokoro Kitchen and Okiyodokoro Kitchen. One focuses on Takagi’s project ‘Threads of Beauty,’ for which she traveled to twelve countries, photographing people who wear traditional clothes as part of their daily lives. The other series is dedicated to high-end fashion created between the 1980s and today, with clothes by designers such as Paul Smith, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and John Galliano, as well as new work shot for Dior.

In Iran, Takagi met people from nomadic tribes who possessed only the few precious clothes they were able to carry. Whenever they migrated, they wore all the clothing they owned, in layers.

For Dior, Takagi photographed haute couture items, bringing out the exceptional beauty of these clothes that exist thanks to the serious skill and craftsmanship of the manufacturers and the sincere passion of the clients who order them. Even though high-end fashion may seem to exist in a completely different universe than the traditional clothes worn by the nomadic people, her photographs reveal a love and affection that is common to both.

Featuring original prints, oversized digital prints, works colored by the artist, and works printed on photographic paper, washi, cotton paper, plaster, and other materials, this exhibition explores the depth and diversity of photographic expression.

“I believe that fashion and photography help people dream,” says Takagi. Visitors to Parallel World traverse freely between two different worlds of fashion. As the boundaries between the two slowly begin to disappear, they make way for fundamental questions that usually stay hidden away in daily life: What are clothes? What is photography? And what is happiness?

From October until December 2022, Coco Capitán lived in Kyoto as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE’s artist-in-residency program. During that time she created her series Ookini, about teenagers and young people living in Kyoto. Capitán used her film camera to portray people from all kinds of backgrounds, from a future kama master, son of kyogen performer, daughters of doll maker, zen monk students, maiko, and other people whose daily lives are rooted in traditional culture, to college and high school students and other young people she met by chance as she rode her bicycle around Kyoto. To everyone who agreed to help her with her series, Capitán expressed her gratitude with the Kansai phrase for Thank you: Ookini!

In addition to fine art, Capitán collaborates with various fashion brands and companies on commercial work. Using her freedom of expression as an artist, she does not shy away from working in the capitalist marketplace – on the contrary, she says this approach has helped broaden her range of possibilities and expression. She works in a variety of genres and media, including painting, photography, and poetry, and actively experiments with diverse methods to connect directly with her audience, as if to provide everyone with their own unique entrance to her body of work.

The young generation of Kyoto, whom Capitán photographed freely, in her own way. Individuality and cooperation, made visible by conventions embedded in tradition and fashion. Is this not the nature of communities where people accept each other? Capitán’s writings, her unvarnished thoughts and feelings, penned without regard for any rules, may gently open the lid of the hearts of people who hesitate to express their own feelings.

From October until December 2022, Coco Capitán lived in Kyoto as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE’s artist-in-residency program. During that time she created her series Ookini, about teenagers and young people living in Kyoto. Capitán used her film camera to portray people from all kinds of backgrounds, from a future kama master, son of kyogen performer, daughters of doll maker, zen monk students, maiko, and other people whose daily lives are rooted in traditional culture, to college and high school students and other young people she met by chance as she rode her bicycle around Kyoto. To everyone who agreed to help her with her series, Capitán expressed her gratitude with the Kansai phrase for Thank you: Ookini!

In addition to fine art, Capitán collaborates with various fashion brands and companies on commercial work. Using her freedom of expression as an artist, she does not shy away from working in the capitalist marketplace – on the contrary, she says this approach has helped broaden her range of possibilities and expression. She works in a variety of genres and media, including painting, photography, and poetry, and actively experiments with diverse methods to connect directly with her audience, as if to provide everyone with their own unique entrance to her body of work.

The young generation of Kyoto, whom Capitán photographed freely, in her own way. Individuality and cooperation, made visible by conventions embedded in tradition and fashion. Is this not the nature of communities where people accept each other? Capitán’s writings, her unvarnished thoughts and feelings, penned without regard for any rules, may gently open the lid of the hearts of people who hesitate to express their own feelings.

From October until December 2022, Coco Capitán lived in Kyoto as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE’s artist-in-residency program. During that time she created her series Ookini, about teenagers and young people living in Kyoto. Capitán used her film camera to portray people from all kinds of backgrounds, from a future kama master, son of kyogen performer, daughters of doll maker, zen monk students, maiko, and other people whose daily lives are rooted in traditional culture, to college and high school students and other young people she met by chance as she rode her bicycle around Kyoto. To everyone who agreed to help her with her series, Capitán expressed her gratitude with the Kansai phrase for Thank you: Ookini!

In addition to fine art, Capitán collaborates with various fashion brands and companies on commercial work. Using her freedom of expression as an artist, she does not shy away from working in the capitalist marketplace – on the contrary, she says this approach has helped broaden her range of possibilities and expression. She works in a variety of genres and media, including painting, photography, and poetry, and actively experiments with diverse methods to connect directly with her audience, as if to provide everyone with their own unique entrance to her body of work.

The young generation of Kyoto, whom Capitán photographed freely, in her own way. Individuality and cooperation, made visible by conventions embedded in tradition and fashion. Is this not the nature of communities where people accept each other? Capitán’s writings, her unvarnished thoughts and feelings, penned without regard for any rules, may gently open the lid of the hearts of people who hesitate to express their own feelings.

Every year thousands of people try to cross the Mediterranean Sea from the African coast to Europe. In the summer of 2016, César Dezfuli spends three weeks on board the Iuventa, a former fishing boat operated by the German NGO Jugend Rettet, where he witnesses the rescue vessel assist people risking their lives on the central Mediterranean migration route, the overseas crossing from Libya to Italy.

On August 1st, 118 people were rescued from a rubber dinghy drifting 20 nautical miles off the coast of Libya. Dezfuli photographs all the passengers on the boat minutes after their rescue, in an attempt to attach names and faces to this reality, to humanise this tragedy. Shortly afterwards, the migrants disembark in Italy, in the Sicilian port of Pozzalo.

The desire to document the reality of migration, to reclaim identities that remain invisible behind the statistics, leads Dezfuli to a second stage: the stories of the protagonists of the project must be told. He undertakes a search for the 118 passengers to find out why they left their countries, what they experienced on the migration route, and how they continued their lives after being rescued at sea.

We find migrations due to political, economic or sentimental issues; people dragged by the inertia of migratory routes, escaping family conflicts, or driven by the simple and human ambition to travel. Both meditated and improvised choices. Through their steps, we trace the paths from different African countries to Libya, and the human rights violations committed there.

Their testimonies also reveal the reality they face in Europe. They show, among other aspects, how slow governments are in responding to asylum requests. This inertia slows down integration into society, as applicants are forced to wait passively, often for several years. Silence and the rejection of asylum applications force them to keep on moving within the European continent.

Where people end up is often the result of language skills, a network of acquaintances, word of mouth about job opportunities in a certain place, or chance. Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands are some of the stop-over countries. Many also stay in Italian reception centres, waiting for their situation to be regularised.

In ‘Passengers’, Dezfuli documents these people’s stories in order to build empathy and understanding, and to create a documentary corpus to serve as a reference and help prevent the plight of migrants from being forgotten.

After joining forces on the exhibition Home Again by Mari Katayama, shown at KYOTOGRAPHIE in 2020 and in Paris the following year, on the group show Women Artists from the MEP Studio presented in the spring of 2021, and Irving Penn: Works 1939-2007. Masterpieces from the MEP Collection presented in the spring of 2022, the MEP is proud to once again collaborate with the KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival to present Boris Mikhailov’s slideshow Yesterday’s Sandwich, following the major retrospective of Mikhailov’s work organised by the MEP in 2022.

Born in 1938 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Boris Mikhailov, whose pioneering practice encompasses documentary photography, conceptual work, painting and performance, is one of the greatest photographic artists of his generation. Since the 1960s, he has been creating a haunting record of the tumultuous changes in Ukraine that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequences of its dissolution.

Yesterday’s Sandwich was conceived at the beginning of the artist’s career in the late 1960s and 1970s, after Mikhailov accidentally superimposed two slides from a series of images forbidden by the communist regime. Fascinated by the result, he created dozens of accidental combinations, which he presented in the form of a poetic installation juxtaposing scenes of urban landscapes, military parades and female nudes, evoking the influence of the totalitarian regime on everyday Soviet life.

This celebration of Boris Mikhailov’s oeuvre, taking place against the backdrop of a brutal war in Ukraine that few thought possible in the twenty-first century, is especially poignant in light of the fact that Boris and Vita Mikhailov’s native Kharkiv has been devastated by this conflict; their emotional and political relationship to their subject has been permanently and irrevocably altered. Given these tragic circumstances, we are especially proud to honor his work at a moment when there is a clear need to support the Ukrainian people and its threatened cultural sector both at home and abroad. Yesterday’s Sandwich is thus a celebration the lives of people who continue to show the meaning of survival and triumph over adversity, as seen through the eyes of one of their most sensitive and original witnesses.

This exhibition is conceived as an immersive experience of the East London Caribbean diaspora from the 1960s and 70s.

After the Second World War, Britain needed to rebuild, and invited its commonwealth citizens to move to the UK. Many Jamaicans responded by immigrating to Britain in search of a better life. Those who arrived from Caribbean countries were labeled the ‘Windrush generation.’

Amongst these immigrants was Dennis Morris, who as a young boy traveled with his mother from Jamaica to London in the 1960s. Through his local church choir and his benefactor, Donald Paterson, Morris discovered photography and embarked on a remarkable journey, documenting his environment and community.

The Caribbean immigrants’ positivity, enthusiasm, and desire to succeed, despite the hardships they endured, come through powerfully in Morris’ photos. For this is the time when these Caribbean transplants went from being called ‘coloured people’ to being, defiantly and proudly, Black.

‘Alba’hian’ in Agni (the language of the Akan cultural group of Côte d’Ivoire) means 'the first light of the day.' Every morning Joana Choumali wakes up at dawn and takes a walk, observing the land and buildings, shapes slowly revealing themselves, the streets and people awakening. As the morning light slowly makes every detail of the material world visible, she becomes aware of a shift in her thoughts and perceptions. Her morning stroll becomes a ritual of introspection.

During her walks she takes pictures of the landscape. Afterwards, using a mixed technique of collage, embroidery, painting, and photomontage, she superimposes onto the photographs several layers of ethereal fabrics, intertwined with silhouettes of passers-by. The result is a delicate and dreamy toile which evokes invisible meanings and revelations from the artist’s morning experiences. One might say that Choumali’s work is made of the same elements that memories and dreams are made of. The long hours she spends sewing together different layers of fabric, and embroidering onto the prints her motifs and drawings, have become a form of meditation.

What Choumali creates is not immediately visible in its entirety. As with her morning walks, the beauty and the complexity of her artworks are perceived only through a process of discovery of each detail. The exploration of each piece is like the unveiling of a hidden treasure. It recalls Joana’s relationship with her own land—the place where she feels most alive, surrounded everywhere by poetry, constantly regenerating energy and beauty.

This project was inspired by the theme of this year’s edition of Kyotographie: Borders.

Markets are intense, diverse, rich and always-alive places where the ideal and the reality of a community mix together. Markets are among the first places a tourist explores when visiting a new city, and at the same time the place the city’s inhabitants go for their daily needs.

Every country, every culture, has its own markets, with their particular colours, sounds, perfumes, and personages. Yet markets are all similar in the way they viscerally connect with the essence of a community’s life.

Joana decided to create images that blend the borders between Japan and Côte d’Ivoire, placing images shot in a Kyoto market next to images shot in an Abidjan market, and obscuring the visual boundary between the two through her embroidery.

The resulting images represent and evoke our shared humanity, with each shopkeeper, portrayed in front of their own shop, connected by the colorful threads and embroidered lines of the artist to his or her twin on a different continent.

Creating the illusion of a single image through embroidery, Joana makes visible her own imaginary market, where Kyotoites and Abidjanaises are neighbors. In this virtual space, the people portrayed work side by side, their different personalities and cultures free to spend time together, making it even more evident how much they have in common.

The Spanish-born, New York-based artist, Inma Barrero creates sculptures and three-dimensional installations using ceramics and metal. Barrero’s artistic path has taken her away from traditional expectations, to embrace imperfection and welcome accidents. The fragments in her work speak of fractures, natural as well as cultural. The works refer to the broken aspects of our lives, social, personal, spiritual. Barrero does not see breaking as the end of the process, to the contrary, she sees in it a possible way forward, a transformative process.

In 2019, Inma Barrero lived in Kyoto and learned kintsugi, a traditional Japanese technique for repairing pottery. While the kintsugi technique uses gold, in her native Spain, broken pottery is repaired using metal clamps. The metal in both traditions is used to create new connections.

For Breaking Walls, Barrero, joined by many pottery and ceramics artists and students, gathered a multitude of broken porcelain pieces from the ceramic workshops of Kyoto. These discarded fragments of diverse origins were inserted into a metal mesh frame, creating a polychromic wall. The creative process echoes the Spanish and Kintsugi repair techniques: together, metal and broken porcelain form something anew. Breaking Walls rises from the ground and opens at its center to welcome people within. Rather than a divider, Barrero sees this piece as a space to bring people together.

A video installation accompanies Breaking Walls. The film features the destruction of one of Inma Barrero’s delicate and feminine dress-like sculptures. Like the artists who had poured their dedicated self in the pieces they eventually discarded, Barrero too let go of this beloved work. The film chronicles the violence of the act, the coming down of the feminine form, the crumbling of the dress in order to create something new. The artist conceived this piece about feminine transformation, where the movie becomes the art piece. The act of breaking the delicate sculpture becomes the art. A negation of the ultimate destruction, where fragility and strength come full circle.

Made from broken pieces, Barrero’s work shines a new light on the significance of diversity and coexistence, and the importance of traditions, culture and community.