Since her childhood, Aiko Miyanaga had always observed wooden apple crates, frozen in time and absolute silence, in her family workshop. Never daring to touch them, she finally decided in 2020 to take a closer look. Inside, she discovered “mold rounds” (two-part plaster molds from Sèvres) with heavy, white, and intricately detailed forms. Many were missing pieces, yet they were meticulously stored and labeled with descriptions such as “Rabbit, incomplete body,” “Sleeping tiger, tail,” or “Cat, without ears.”
Reflecting the years of painstaking work by her father, brother, and those who studied the Tozan Kiln (a traditional ceramic kiln), Aiko Miyanaga discovered that these molds were crafted by the first Tozan Miyanaga, her great-grandfather. He served as one of the coordinators for the Japanese Pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris and collaborated with Numata Ichiga, a ceramic sculptor and the only Japanese artist to study at the Manufacture de Sèvres.
Driven by the desire to reconnect with the spirit, creativity, and aspirations of early 20th-century Paris, Aiko Miyanaga began casting glass into these historic molds. She felt compelled to breathe new life into the hollows that lay dormant for a century, filling them with the air of the present day. The series valley of sleeping sea thus emerged as a way to awaken the connection between Paris of 1900 and Kyoto in the 2020s.
“I know very little about what Paris was like during the Belle Époque, when my great-grandfather lived there before becoming a potter. I can only imagine it through the few surviving objects and materials. But as I wander the city, imagining my great-grandfather’s feelings as he experienced the dawn of a new century, I eagerly anticipate seeing the Parisian landscape reflected in this glass, which captures the air of the present. The long-absent forms, once dormant in Kyoto, are now connected in Paris—linking past, present, and future,” said Aiko Miyanaga.
Set across the ground floor and first floor of a mansion built in 1900, Le Clézio Gallery is proud to present 1900-2025: breath of light, Aiko Miyanaga’s first solo exhibition in France. An established artist from a distinguished lineage of Japanese ceramicists, she has recently been featured in major museum exhibitions in Japan, including the Maison Hermès, the Mori Art Museum, and the Tomoya Glass Museum in 2023, as well as the Takamatsu Art Museum, Saga Prefectural Art Museum, Saitama Museum of Modern Art, and Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in 2024.
