Listening to the Garden

HANZAWA Tomomi has explored the relationship between matter and memory through the act of making paper. Paper is not simply a material—it is a structure formed by the entanglement of fibers, an object that holds human narratives within it. In this exhibition, HANZAWA takes as her starting point the private memories of her grandmother's haiku and garden, moving toward the universal question of identity. By what do we recognize others, and by what do we sustain ourselves? Through paper as material, HANZAWA's practice quietly proposes that identity is not fixed but emerges in oscillation, formed within relationships with others.

"My grandmother had spent many years composing haiku while gazing at the garden. Even as she ventured outside less frequently, this did not change—she would watch the flowers shift with each season and set down a verse. Those days accumulated."

The garden continued to change with time after her grandmother's death. Standing in it, HANZAWA sensed her grandmother's presence. From that garden her grandmother had watched, she gathered flowers across the four seasons and drew them into paper. The paper holds the memory of the garden; as her grandmother had looked at the garden and turned it into words, HANZAWA turns the garden into paper—a re-living of the act of composition.

The garden her grandmother watched, the verses she composed, the things she touched—do these traces constitute who her grandmother was? Or is it rather the presence HANZAWA herself perceives, as someone outside, that brings her grandmother into being? The question surfaces in the act of making paper. Identity, it seems, comes into existence while oscillating within relationships with others.

Within that continued oscillation, the grandmother's presence settles as a remnant—in the paper, in the garden. That a person is no longer there, and that one feels them nonetheless: these two things can be true at once. Identity is not something fixed. HANZAWA proposes that it lies in accepting the oscillation as it is.

For inquiries regarding the exhibition and works, please contact info@aaploit.com.