The myth of Japan’s creation tells how two divine beings, Izanagi and Izanami, stirred the ocean with their spears in order to form their descendants, naturally amalgamated with the islands. In this exhibition of Kimi Nii’s work, this myth of origin is evoked by recent pottery pieces whose primordial shapes resemble those of the islands.
The embryo of these islands, however, did not come from the volitional gesture of the gods, but from the physical change of state of the clouds. From the process of change between the liquid and the solid state, that is, from the interaction between sky and earth, clay arises, and is then transformed into pottery, which, in turn, becomes art. Both Kimi Nii’s “clouds” as well as her “islands,” the most recent examples of her sculpture, recur to the asymmetry and the irregularity of organic forms – in opposition to the conquering of geometry by which modernity has thrived.
Kimi Nii preserved the essential traits of her native culture, and yet embraced Brazilian contemporaneousness. This fusion between East and West is produced by the paradoxical acknowledgement that new developments are only possible by paying respect to tradition. This retrospective is a reassessment of the modernist legacy and of the status of pottery as sculpture.
Places and Dates:
Caixa Cultural (SP): Aug to Oct/2014
Centro Cultural Correios (RJ): Dec/2014 to Feb/2015
