Mika Horie
'Perfectly Imperfect': Horie Mika (1984)
Horie Mika is a Japanese photographic artist who focuses on creating cyanotypes on paper made by herself. Trees, water and light are the main elements that Horie uses to create her artworks.
Horie lives in Yamanaka Onsen, Kaga, Ishikawa prefecture, in a Meiji-era farmhouse and studio in the mountains. After the snow melts in spring, Horie drives up narrow winding roads into the mountains to fill her car with gampi branches—the raw material to make traditional paper. Horie processes the gampi fibers fully by hand into delicate-looking but sturdy paper, which is the material on which she prints cyanotype images of the landscapes, foliage, nearly-forgotten villages and objects in or around her home.
Horie’s photographic process is nearly as natural and time-consuming as her paper making. After having photographed her natural surroundings, Horie treats her paper with ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, places the negatives directly on top of the paper and allows the sun to expose them to shades of cyan and deep indigo. She then washes the paper with spring water to fixate the image and lets the art work dry in the wind.
Horie’s work is suffused with wabi-sabi. Her artworks are first of all the result of her process of working with natural materials. Furthermore, her prints are not perfect. They are all different, unique, even when they show the same image, because of the handmade paper and the ever-changing sunlight. Each print has a different texture, with uneven rims, some blurry parts and a large variety of tones of blue. The imagery is also very modest and humble. Horie’s way of living furthermore implies wabi-sabi:
“Wabi-sabi is simply the feeling of my daily life of creating. Each day I spend a significant amount of time catching its essence of tranquility, harmony, beauty and imperfection through shooting photos, making paper and cyanotype. I embrace the condition of gampi tree fiber, spring water and sunlight changing all the time. One day I realised that being surrounded by abundant nature has changed my mentality. I am getting to understand my imperfections.” - Mika Horie
Horie’s words clarify that wabi-sabi is first and foremost an integral part of how the Japanese think and feel and her work is very fitting to evoke a feeling of wabi-sabi.
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Voyage without a road, 2023
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Ori, 2023
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Kiku II, 2023
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White Heron in the Reeds, 2022
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Vibrations of Trees and Water, 2022
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Tsubaki, 2022
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A Sacred Place, 2022
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A Bird Chirps like a Piece of Twig, 2022
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Water leads itself to its vessel, 2021
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Untouched Snowscape, 2021
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The mountains, houses, and rice plants rise above the plains, 2021
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The Composition of the Soil I, 2021
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Swinging Young Bracken, 2021
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In the Pond, in the Temple, 2021
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In Front of the Wall, 2021
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Fuki 1, 2021
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A Hidden Bamboo Grove, 2021
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Snow melts after a spring breeze, 2020/2021
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Yukitsuri II, 2020
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Yukitsuri I, 2020
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Snow melts after a spring breeze, 2020
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Silent in the Morning, 2020
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Silent in the morning, 2020
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Silent in the morning, 2020
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A silver lining, 2020
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When I am at a crossroad, 2019
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The lithe backbone and the background, 2019
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The harmony with the wind, 2019
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Straws that run in the same direction as the water is flowing, 2019
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Sea air, 2019
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Perpetual snow, 2019
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Mountainside and Seaside, 2019
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Dried Persimmons and a Straw Hat, 2019
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Become a wooden pole, 2019
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The layers of memories of the small stone never fade away, 2018
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Sun drying, 2018
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Sun drying, 2018
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Sky on the Frontier, 2018
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Legs of Crane, 2018
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Indigo Moon and White Moon, 2018
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Faint Sound I, 2018
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Breakfast, 2018
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A tea ceremony, 2018
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A forgotten paper fan, 2018
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Ivy and wood, 2017
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Invisible yarn, 2017
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Traveling path, 2016
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Spring dragon, 2016
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Ozuchi, 2016
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Before looking at the full moon, 2016
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A remote mountaintop, 2016
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Sasanqua, 2015
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#57 Perfectly Imperfect
Wabi Sabi in Photography and Ceramics 4 Feb - 12 Mar 2023“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen IBASHO is proud to present the group exhibition ‘Perfectly Imperfect’. This exhibition follows the museum...Read more -
#50 Trees, Water and Light - Mika Horie
29 Jan - 13 Mar 2022IBASHO is delighted to present Mika Horie’s work in her first solo exhibition at IBASHO: ‘Trees, Water and Light’ and her newest book with the same title, co-published by the(M)...Read more -
#47 Mizu
Summer group exhibition on the theme of 'Water' 17 Jun - 22 Aug 2021For the annual Summer exhibition of 2021 IBASHO has chosen the theme ' Mizu ', the word for 'water' in Japanese. As an island nation, Japan has a deep connection...Read more -
#40 Wabi Sabi
11 Jun - 30 Aug 2020IBASHO is delighted to announce the Summer exhibition for 2020 which will be a group exhibition on the concept of ‘wabi sabi’. Wabi sabi as an aesthetic concept is generally...Read more
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#37 初雪 HATSUYUKI - a group exhibition on 'FIRST SNOW'
7 Dec 2019 - 12 Jan 2020A small flake of snow Came floating down Onto my forefinger Onto its tip Heaven's messenger as it were A small flake of snow Arrived floating Melted on my forefinger...Read more -
#34 NEKO Project
1 Jun - 4 Aug 2019Japanese people have had a long relationship with cats. More than 1000 years ago, people in the upper class were already living with cats. Common people also started having pet...Read more -
#21 Female Force from Japan
1 Jun - 3 Sep 2017EXHIBITION EXTENDED: OPEN BY APPOINTMENT DURING SUMMER! Since the opening of IBASHO in March 2015 we have been exposed to so much photographic talent coming from Japan, that we have...Read more