JOURNALS

About the work of Machiko Agano

Machiko Agano’s installations create architectural and atmospheric environments that the audience can enter, feel immersed or enveloped in. It is almost like entering or engaging with a building that breathes and lives. Going to Japan in 2003 to collaborate with Machiko for the first time, I was curious to find out about her creative process and how she managed to make these extraordinary structures. Machiko explained that she likes to work intuitively, expressing the mystery and powers of nature. I first found it difficult to understand how she could create such incredible work on a monumental scale through working intuitively. It almost frustrated me, being a Western artist who had learnt to contextualise my ideas, processes and work, that she couldn’t provide me with a more defined artist’s statement behind her work and methods. Of course that was a narrow minded reaction. Fortunately after some time in Japan,  I had let go some of my western impatience and search for logic, and started understanding more of Machiko’s and other Japanese artists’ ways of communicating about their work and then a new world opened up to me.

I find Machiko’s way of working in modules very interesting. A method I found many artists in Japan using, be they painters, sculptors or textile artists. It is such a practical approach in the stage of making, transport, hanging and lastly storing, which I think has escaped most western artists. Working on a large scale in smallish studios is a reality for many artists in Japan. Perhaps this is why they have developed this clever way of working, which fascinates and inspires me, and something I have brought into my own art practice after working with Machiko.

I learnt while working with Machiko that Japanese people has a dual relationship to nature.  They don’t trust it to be only beautiful, but expect it to also bring on unexpected and dangerous situations. I feel that Machiko’s work expresses this two sided relationship and perhaps that is also the reason for why she is working on the monumental scale she is, emphasising the powers of nature and her respect for it.

Machiko’ work is most often colourless, transparent, light, open and fragile. These characteristics are in opposition to the scale and the strength of the habitat it represents. Her work requires much physical space and is powerful and overwhelming, but yet quiet and sensitive. Her work has so many sides and layers, just like nature. You will always find a new path or layer and keep being surprised and breathtaken.

Machiko has gone through many stages in her career, making fantastic work in each of them. However, she is not the one who stays still in a glory of recognition, but continues to challenge herself into new directions and ways of working. Perhaps her intuitive working approach has given her a capability and willingness to be open to new inspiration and methods, but daring to follow those possibilities shows a brave and dedicated artist and person.

Anniken Amundsen, June 2008