Saya

Saya works mainly in gold-and-vermilion Japanese painting, using ink, alcohol ink, resin and more, and has shown her work in Europe, Shanghai and New York. There is a power in it that recalls Japanese rock, and a delicacy beneath. I set out to find how that motion and stillness could come across on a website.

To bring not only the beauty of the work but the philosophy behind it onto the screen, I had to break through the limits of my own expression. Saya's own words are placed throughout the site, so that works and words appear in turn.

The presentation rests on full-screen films and interludes between chapters. The English pages are dark; the Japanese pages follow the visitor's local time, bright by day and dark by night. The menu sits in the lower right corner, so that nothing extra stands in front of the work.

Her works are arranged in six chapters from 2021 to today, each with the context of its year. Followed in order, they tell one story: from nature, the cosmos and life, to the inner self, and on to emptiness, time and being. Each work opens large enough to see the surface of the painting.

Because she exhibits abroad so often, the English pages are the entrance, with Japanese alongside. A viewer lets you leaf through printed booklets and magazine features on the site, and portfolio and profile PDFs are available to download.