松本千里 / Chisato Matsumoto

Venue: Kyu Itoya

About Works: [Curatorial Comment]

Installed in the tatami room of a former clothing store, this work extends Chisato Matsumoto’s ongoing exploration of shibori forms—structures that appear in the intermediate stage of tie-dyeing and serve as a sculptural unit in her practice. Responding to the memory of a place where yarn was once sold and people regularly came and went, the work develops her method of allowing these shibori forms to proliferate from the walls and supports of the building, spreading through space with an almost organism-like behavior.
In Embracing Loom, the forms climb along the ceiling and walls toward an old loom placed at the center of the room, touching, grasping, and seeming to lift or hold it in an embrace. The accumulated smells, labor, and stored stories of the yarn shop—along with the wishes and lingering sentiments that have settled in the building over time—appear as if embodied in these textile growths, hesitant to release a loom that has long ceased to function. They evoke a sense of attachment to the past, or even a kind of persistence that borders on fixation, shaped by the site’s particular history.
As the town changes and the role of the textile industry continues to shift, fragments of memory and the efforts that once sustained this region seem to rise again in the form of cloth. During her two-week residency, Matsumoto describes gradually sensing what these “children,” as she calls them, wants to do within this space, guiding their forms as if working on their behalf. The resulting work reconnects with the looms and practices that once animated the town, drawing out the traces of labor accumulated in this place and returning them in the form of a tactile presence.

[Artist Statement]

In an old threads store that was once crossed by threads and looms, an installation was created using wringed (shibori) fabric, expanding outward as if to immerse the viewer in the memory of weaving and the pillars that supported it.

Each piece of cloth, wringed by hand, resonates with the memories of the looms, tools, and spinning rooms that once sustained the industry. Drawing in both the burning magma and the clear, cool air that dwell within this land, the fabric rises with the breath of life itself.

Amid the veining networks of faith and daily labor that continue to coexist, the act of wringing cloth became a gesture of handwork. The physicality of the shibori technique gently gathers the life that flows beneath Fujiyoshida’s surface, as if in quiet prayer.

Artist Profile: 松本千里 / Chisato Matsumoto
Born in Hiroshima in 1994, Chisato Matsumoto completed her PhD in Art Studies at Hiroshima City University in 2023. Currently, she lives and works in Hiroshima, Japan. Matsumoto reinterprets traditional Japanese art and craft techniques for the modern day. She creates three-dimensional forms using shibori, a traditional Japanese tie-dyeing technique, and features the cloth tied with thread through various forms of expression such as installations, performances, and kinetic art. Manipulating the fabric to resemble human figures, Matsumoto incorporates the complex energies and dynamics of contemporary society into her work through abstract spatial modelling based on the theme of “the individual and the crowd”. Recently, her work has expanded to explore Asian dyeing and weaving cultures, as she experiments with installations that incorporate floss silk.