When Hope is Hard.

· Kintsugi: The Restorative Art of Naoko Fukumaru at Portland Japanese Garden ·

Art
Oct 7, 2024
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From: Kawaranai Sora: Nakinagara Warainagara (The Sky Unchanged: Tears and Smiles)

Fall has arrived at Portland Japanese Garden. Yellowing leaves and needles shine golden when touched by the sun, moss glows chartreuse in the cracks of the stones where it prefers to settle, accentuating the imperfections of the otherwise smooth surfaces. I cannot imagine a more appropriate setting for the exhibition currently on show at the garden’s Pavilion Gallery and Tanabe Gallery.

Kintsugi: The Restorative Art of Naoko Fukumaru is mirroring the sights from the fall garden – attention-grabbing gold and an openness to blemishes rather than perfection of any given object. In addition, the artist offers us much more, introducing general ideas about Japanese philosophy as well as universal approaches to healing, so direly needed in a world torn apart by division and war, in desperate want of mending.

Kin means gold in Japanese, and Tsugi refers to the joining of parts. Fukumaru takes broken vessels or other damaged objects and restores their original shape as much as possible. Rather than hiding the restorative efforts, the contours of the breaks are accentuated with gold dust, now shimmering veins traversing the pottery. The mending consists of a multi-step, time-consuming procedure, applying multiple layers of the Japanese lacquer urushi, a highly allergenic resin derived from the urushi tree, mixing it with powdered gold or silver, and eventual polishing the joined surfaces at the seam.

Some say that Kintsugi can be traced back to Ashikaga Yoshimasa, a shogun of the 15th century. He sent a favorite broken Chinese tea bowl back to China for repair and did not like the outcome at all. Japanese artisans were instructed to develop a more aesthetically pleasing way to restore broken ceramics. The result was Kintsugi.

The essence of the approach is to convey the history of a given object and the beauty found in its imperfection. Mending reconstitutes what has been broken, with visible scars a reminder of the care we extend to what has suffered, and our belief that underneath it is still whole, now even more beautiful. The technique is clearly in line with a more general Japanese philosophy, that of Wabi Sabi. In the most basic form (admittedly my level of understanding), it acknowledges three simple realities:

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

Wabi refers to the essence of simplification, of cutting down the things to that which is important, whereas Sabi refers to the passage of time, and more specifically to the fact that the core of something remains the same, even though the facade or surface may change over time (Ref.).

Blue Moon (2023)

Samanid Empire, Nishapur pottery, ca. 10th -12th C. – Repaired with resin, calcium carbonate, 24K gold.

Fukumaru grew up in a third-generation antiques dealer family in Kyoto, Japan. She trained as a restoration expert for glass and ceramics in England and is in high international demand by elite institutions and museums to bring blemished pieces back to perfection. Her turn to Kintsugi happened by chance some 5 years ago, during an exceedingly difficult period in her personal life. She is now counted among the masters of the art form. Creating art that focussed on a narrative of resilience had a therapeutic effect. This is obviously true for all good therapies: we establish meaning through a close look at our history, we focus on what has been overcome, rather than what was harmed, and in the process nourish hope and emphasize strength simultaneously.

The very idea that scars can be beautiful and proud emblems of survival is empowering during times when hope is hard. However changed, the essence of us moves on.

The ceramics on display come from various parts of the world, different cultures and different time periods, all broken in one way or another, discarded from quotidian use, and now restored.

Dreaming in The Blue (2023) (detail)

Kashan Persian earthenware, ca. 11th – mid 1 4th C – Repaired with resin, calcium carbonate, urushi, and 24K gold.

Each vessel has its own story to tell, often helped by explanatory titles. The artist put some back together with added beauty,

combined others with found objects,

Born This Way – Driftwood (2023) Imari porcelain, ca. 1820-1860

Born This Way – Unwanted (2023)

Imari porcelain, ca. 1820-1860 Repaired with resin, urushi, and 24K gold

“Naturally degraded over time, unusually shaped driftwood interacts with human-made ceramics deformed from the extreme heat of the kiln. Both have undergone a journey of transformation, exhibiting an unintentional beauty forged beyond human control. Fukumaru’s Born This Way series looks into the harmony between human and nature’s creations, conveying arguments for what true beauty is in our modern world.” (Display Signage)

and experimented with more ceramic embellishments for a third grouping, adding elements of sculpture.

Beautiful Trauma – Persian Jug (2023) Persian terracotta jug, ca. 1200 – 800 BCE – Repaired with resin, urushi, 24K gold, and plaster “Crystals require high heat, pressure, and time to form. Fukumaru’s motivation behind this piece was transforming negative experiences into something empowering. Conserving the ancient and porous ceramic fragments of the Persian jug was delicate and time-consuming work to which she added dozens of individually cast crystal forms that were carefully refined, assembled, and attached. Created over many months, the process took on meaning: for each scar that heals, a crystal forms as evidence of surmounting hardship.” (Display Signage.)

Her art challenges the viewer to find meaning – as all good art does. The artist herself stresses the therapeutic value of retroactively working through trauma, and coming up healed on the other end. I could not agree more: her work exemplifies resilience. The aesthetics of scar visibility also reminded me of a related approach that we have started to see amongst survivors of surgical trauma, in particular breast cancer. Many women these days opt not for reconstructive surgery, but put striking tattoos over their mastectomy scars, a sign of acceptance of a new kind of beauty born from fear and pain that is overcome. My own relationship with scars, perhaps explaining my intense affinity to Fukumaru’s work, started early. Two symmetrical, L-shaped scars from lung surgery on my 16 years-old back were eventually accepted rather than self-consciously loathed through the beauty of healing words: a friend dryly commented, “I see, that’s where they cut off your wings.” Not that an angelic existence beckoned, but I never had problems with scars again. Embellished acknowledgment healed.

The possibility of reemergence from existential destruction is, of course, particularly poignant for a nation who lived through the horrors of Hiroshima and the 3.11 catastrophe, when on March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of residents of the Tohoku region in the northeastern part of the country, which in turn caused a partial meltdown of one of the reactors of the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture. Various forms of art revealed the perseverance of the Japanese people working through trauma. Tanka poetry proliferated, describing ordinary people’s reactions and approaches to healing. Filmmakers captured the determination to overcome disaster. Here is my favorite short by Isamu Hirabayashi, a brilliant monologue of a cicada that survived the 66 years between the two disasters. It acknowledges that nothing lasts forever in face of catastrophe, but that forward movement is required to the very last moment.

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We live in this culture of endless extraction and disposal: extraction from the earth, extraction from people’s bodies, from communities, as if there’s no limit, as if there’s no consequence to how we’re taking and disposing, and as if it can go on endlessly. We are reaching the breaking point on multiple levels. Communities are breaking, the planet is breaking, people’s bodies are breaking. We are taking too much. – Naomi Klein This changes everything (2014)

Back to the art on hand: the Kintsugi process does not just alert to the retroactive implications of healing, but also the proactive value of mending: preserving something in a world that is bent on overconsumption, the lure of the ever new.

Whether it is fashion or the production of cheap household goods, these days we encounter cycles of fast creation and quick discarding. We are caught in a mode of linear production. The line goes from extraction of the resources needed to manufacture a good, to production, to distribution, to consumption, and finally, to disposal. Eventually the resources we extract will run out and disposal of the evermore accumulating waste existentially harms the planet’s health.

What Fukumaru does for ceramics, many fabric artists do for those things that we consume and discard the most, clothing: rather than throwing things out, they are visibly elevated to works of art, by embroidery or other forms of visible mending. In fact the visible mending movement (the link provides multiple examples of the art form) often employs golden threads, and consciously refers to Kintsugi as a model for restoration. The Dutch fashion collective Painted Series, for example, started a non-profit clothing brand called GOLDEN JOINERY, where people were invited to repair garments with golden thread, showing the rips instead of hiding them. These fabric arts are also closely related to another gift Japanese crafters gave to the world: Sashiko, a Japanese mending technique involving a running stitch and geometric patterns.

Melting Sun (2021)

Excavated stoneware by Michael Henry, ca. 1970s – Repaired with textile, threads, and resin

“Sashiko, a traditional Japanese technique that uses embroidery to functionally reinforce fabric, inspired this piece. Fukumaru fused thousands of her hand stitches with a recovered bowl by Canadian potter, Mick (Michael)Henry. The stitches represent the manmade tension and strains on our world in contrast to the rustic clay bowl.” (Display Signage)

What we are really talking about here is a form of upcycling, when we change a linear system to a circular one, by reclaiming what already exists, and refashioning it into something that has more value: upcycling discarded clothes into new ones, or into different objects, or incorporating them into art. Upcycling broken pottery into restored vessels, or into different configurations, works of art. Fukumaru’s creative output, in other words, does not solely affect our concept of resilience, but also reminds us of the importance of sustainability.

Nothing lasts. Nothing is finished. Nothing is perfect.

Yet we can buy time, extend the life span, change our perspective on the value of imperfection. We can trust that some core will remain constant, even in the face of appearance change. This is true for pottery, for our emergence from trauma and loss, for the ravages of aging.

And it is particularly true for gardens: seasons and their respective offerings don’t last. No work is ever finished. All striving for perfection a futile exercise. Yet they are the very model of resilience and sustainability if we take care to restore them, nurture them, make the changing beauty visible for all to apprehend.

Go see for yourself. Gold awaits.