"A View From the Other Side"

"In Iceland, there is a place where the earth is born. In Japan, where I was born, there are places where the earth's crust sinks.
There are volcanoes and hot springs, and the environment that Iceland and Japan have in common in the not far away, where nature is both beautiful and threatening.
In this exhibition, I will present the projects I planned during my residency, as well as ongoing work from Berlin.

The first is a dyeing process using seaweed collected from the beaches of Blönduós. The seaweed, which grows in abundance on the beaches along the coast, was divided into
two parts, one red and one green, and used to dye Japanese tenugui towels, sashiko thread, embroidery thread and some second-hand coasters. The red seaweed turned out slightly red and the green seaweed turned out light brown, almost orange.

The second was to introduce indigo grown by a friend's indigo farmer in Toyooka, Hyogo, Japan, and dye it here, but unfortunately, due to the quality of the water in Iceland, the
indigo was not reduced. The series 'Darning Memories', which has continued since Berlin, is a collection of old photographs of beautiful moments of unknown people sold at antique markets in Berlin, and the faces of the people are made anonymous using the Darning technique. This has the effect of giving the viewer a sense of familiarity and affinity with the world of the photographs.

The other work in progress is based on the theme of ‚the connection between fabric, embroidery and history'. Embroidery in particular reflects the unique culture and history
of each country. In Japan, there is a 500-year-old embroidery technique called sashiko, which is currently attracting as much global attention as darning from a sustainability
perspective. I was interested in the pattern and meaning of the keffiyeh, that iconic black and white scarf worn by the Palestinians in the conflict, which is currently a key global issue.
I learnt that the embroidery at the centre of that keffiyeh is based on fishing nets, signifying the connection between Palestinian sailors and the Mediterranean Sea. I discovered that Japanese sashiko also have various embroidery patterns, each with its own name and meaning, and among them I found one with the same fishing net motif. And there is only one remaining weaving factory in the West Bank that makes Palestinian keffiyeh, and the looms used there are still in use, having been manufactured in Japan in the 1960s.

This seemingly unconnected culture is connected through embroidery, which intrigued me and inspired me to create works by interchanging and combining fabric and embroidery in
the same way as replacing canvas and paint. Through sewing in the context of sculpture, I express in the form of art the issues and interests of contemporary society with which I interact in sculpture, installation and in original ways that are difficult to categorise. The materials for all my work are mainly second-hand and recycled garments and fabrics from a sustainability point of view, and I sew entirely by hand, adding only the bare essentials and using no sewing machines or other machinery. I have been doing this consistently for over 20 years."

„A view from the other side.“
Yukiko Terada