I have visited Japan fifteen years ago with a project, and in 2025 again as part of the KUMANONISUMU!2025 residency program in Mie, Kumano. On both journeys I was struck by the presence of 法枠工 (hōwaku-kō), the concrete grids that line Japan’s hilly regions. Designed to prevent landslides, these vast structures retrace the shapes of cliffs and forested slopes, folding human engineering into the very language of the landscape.

Fascinated by their peculiar duality – at once human-made yet carrying the logic of the landscape – I chose them as the focus of a new cycle of drawings. The formations align closely with my ongoing project “Graphic Geographies” a visual idiom in which geographical shapes are distilled into lines of clarity and rhythm.

In my work, the geometric patterns of concrete, fusing artificial structure and organic shape, stand as a metaphorical counterpart to my ongoing exploration of what is unfamiliar, while conversing with forms long presented in my artistic vocabulary.

The hōwaku-kō series comprise fifteen drawings, each mounted in a textile frame sewn specifically for this project. This presentation gestures toward Japan’s textile and curtain traditions, evoking the ways cloth has been woven into everyday life.