Mayumi Onagi, Japan

Cosmos

2020

Lacquer, soil, linen, rice glue, wood

600 × 930 × 430 mm

A creative response to Cosmos by Sarah Thomas

Now here was something that gleamed. We helped to make it. It took a dense place, with heat and lustre. Minerals flowed in. We brought it up for a while. Twenty days until it lost its shine. We were the temporary caretakers of form and so, as promised, we returned it on the eighteenth day. The Earth retook it. We watched it sink. It turned stallion-glossy.

A graduate of art and design with a unique architectural perspective, Mayumi Onagi’s early career began as a garden designer. Working as an apprentice under Nagatoshi Ohnishi, an honorary Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts, she learnt the urushi lacquering technique, before becoming an independent artist and teacher in her own right. She has exhibited extensively in Japan as well as in Taiwan and Germany.