Alessandra Cianetti

Aiko Miyawaki (b. 1929 Tokyo, Japan – d. 2014, Kanagawa, Japan)
Untitled 1960
Oil and powdered marble on plywood board
72.5 x 60.5 cm

For someone like myself, whose background is in contemporary and performance art, these past months spent immersed in Islamic geometry, Indian votive motifs, and Chinese porcelain from the Asian Art in London team and participant galleries, have been a real treat. When asked to select from the images of this year’s event edition, I couldn’t help being attracted by a contemporary artist who also celebrates craft, materiality, and the power of the ephemeral: Aiko Miyawaki.   

Her Untitled (1960) is often referenced as a ‘painting’ with quotations marks because of her use of non-traditional materials such as powdered marble in this case, that gives the work its uneven yet hypnotic surface. Even through its digital image, the work clearly shows Miyawaki’s eye for structures and patterns and anticipates her move, in the late ‘60s, towards the sculptural works for which she is renowned. 

 The Tokyo-born artist once said, “I lost all interest in stories which have a beginning, and an end, in bold shapes, bright colours” therefore, in her practice, she focused on the continuous search for the aranumono – that which is not there. 

In 2021, a year of collective rebuilding, this work by an artist like Miyawaki whose life – but not creative drive – has been marked by illness, provides us with a meditative space where the fragmented whiteness of the ‘canvas’ demands us to take a pause, look deeply, and keep searching for meanings.