Miki Yui: Hitotoki

Miki Yui’s work deals with the memory of lived events. Focusing in particular on images and sounds, it reveals the trace, or wake, that these leave behind as they fade, after having appeared (in the former case) or been produced (in the latter).
Her installations, invariably arranged on a horizontal plane, frequently on the floor itself (under your feet), are fragile, delicate things, like thoughts, memories or dreams as they take labile shape in the mind. Like two valves that in closing form a shell, Miki Yui's shows often take place in two complementary parts, sometimes in different spaces (atem and innerest at the Singhur in Berlin, in 2006) other times in the same space (still life - under your feet at the Kunstverein, Lippstadt, the same year): contrasting elements, foremost of all light and dark, open and closed, visible and invisible, dilation and contraction (in the 2003 drawing composition 1, exhibited as part of “traccia / trace”, Yui’s first show for e/static held in 2004).
But Yui’s work (as the video she presents for the new show testifies) also springs from an intuition similar to that of Jospeh Beuys’ 1972 work, Ausfegen: the residue of an event, or a number of successive events that in its piling up outlives the event itself, represents by its form which is the result of its passage from a formless state (the little mound of dust and dirt gathered on the floor of the Singhur like the pile of waste materials swept up and collected by Beuys after a political demonstration) something that has taken place, something that has been and is no longer, leaving in its wake only this small ‘trace’. What might be ashes or dust or sounds recorded and then modified, remade; and in a similar manner the photos (of Yui’s kitchen-garden or of one of her own installations) that she presented in the form of ink-jet prints for her first show in Turin, after computer-processing them to the point where they were almost completely unrecognizable, still indissolubly linked to the things they represented.
Undoubtedly, the mainspring of Yui’s research is her own personal experience, an aspect equally evident in her drawings: what appears is put there precisely to evoke what has been and is no more, to visibly and audibly testify to the absence of something one cannot (or can no longer) see, hear or touch.
For this her second solo show in Turin, the title of which, hitotoki, might be translated as “for a short while” or “for a moment”, all the works presented are new, created especially for the occasion and specifically for our new space, blank.

Born in Tokyo in 1971, but based in Düsseldorf for the last ten years, Miki Yui has already given several solo shows, including (aside from those already cited) one at Berlin's prestigious Gelbe Musik art space in 2004. Her work has also been included in a number of important group shows: sonambiente in Berlin (2006), Klangraum-Raumklang in Cologne (2004) and Resonanzen in Saarbrücken (2002). Also a musician and composer, Yui participated in the 2006 edition of Maerz Musik in Berlin. Among the CDs she has released is a recent collaboration with Rolf Julius, small sounds meet small music, on the e/static label.

“hitotoki” takes place at the new art space blank, via Reggio 27, Torino.