Following her London debut at the gallery in 2023, Japanese artist Fumi Imamura returns with The Garden of Musubi, a new solo exhibition of collage and watercolour works on paper curated by Julia Tarasyuk.
Rich with symbolism, sensitivity and spiritual resonance, The Garden of Musubi explores the Japanese concept of musubu - to tie, to bind, to connect, as a living principle of transformation, both personal and universal.
Rooted in Shinto cosmology musubi is the divine energy of creation and transformation. Imamura draws particular inspiration from Kamimusubi, one of the three primordial deities, often regarded as a mother goddess in the genealogy of a matriarchal society. The name itself binds two powerful ideas: kami (god or paper) and musubi (to tie). Imamura reflects on this connection deeply beyond materials and process.
While creating this exhibition, she was caring for her newborn child. The revelations of early motherhood profoundly shaped her practice, shifting her relationship to time, attention and embodiment.
Repetition, fragmentation, and renewal are echoed across each piece in gestures of quiet persistence and poetic resilience. Imamura draws on the tradition of mizuhiki, the ceremonial Japanese art of knot-tying with fine paper cords where each knot symbolises connection, protection, and passage.
Her new works mirror this ritual not literally, but symbolically creating knots of memory and emotion, formed with the same attentiveness and intent. Her compositions resemble botanical specimens, ghostly, poetic, and full of subtle life.
Roots reach delicately across paper; blossoms emerge from absences as much as from abundance. The exhibition moves between bold and quiet energies: vivid hues of red, yellow, and purple, intertwined with pale tones of blue and green. Together, these bodies of work echo the rhythm of breathing, the active and passive phases of inhale and exhale, fullness and release.
See this exhibition at Lyndsey Ingram, 16 Bourdon Street, W1K 3PH
