JAPAN MEMORIES

Every time I talk to my grandmother, I hear how the last layer of her memory has yet again faded away in detail, and a new layer has replaced its original. It is a radical restructuring of time and cognitive space, similar to the Japanese concept Usureru (薄れる), where the vast background context of a life thins out and dissolves into a pale mist, leaving only a few isolated, stubborn fragments of reality behind. The spaces around those fragments often stay blank, like a piece of white paper.

In these drawings, the massive voids of negative space represent the terrifying, yet strangely serene, vastness of forgotten memory. What survives the erosion of time are moments of extreme aesthetic friction: high-contrast, hyper-detailed ink boundaries enhanced by brilliant accents of Akaneiro (茜色) — the deep, striking madder-red of a Japanese sunset. Akaneiro operates here as the ultimate crimson remnant, Zanretsu: the brilliant, blinding detail that refuses to be diluted, burning fiercely against the fading dark.

This series of artworks is a nexus where the rigid, cross-hatched syntax of Dürer’s gravures collides with the fluid psychogeography of a journey through modern Japan. Inspired by Japanese panels, art and urbanism, yet heavily filtered through the lens of my grandmother’s dementia, I explore the impermanence of memories. By framing these memories in split urban panels and layered vignettes, the series asks a pressing question about the human condition: when time inevitably strips away the narrative of our lives, do the few bright details that remain become more sacred, or do they simply become beautiful illusions floating in the void?