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Mebuku. Where good things grow, Maebashi Biennale 2026, Maebashi, Japan. Sep 19 - Dec 20, 2026

儚い (Hakanai)

Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka

2026

Dimensions variable

Sewn Kashiki Seishi and Kiryu Seishi washi, sumi ink, indigo, kakishibu, artist’s handmade paper, linocut and gyotaku print, konnyaku, serigraphy designs and printing by Kiryu Tenugui, weaving punch cards from OLN

Thank you: Kotaro Nukaga gallery, Markham Public Art Program, Kiryu Tenugui, Kiryu Seishi, OLN

Photos: Johnny Nghiem

text by curator takenori miyamoto and alexa kumiko hatanaka

Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka has gained international recognition for works using traditional materials such as handmade washi paper. Treating washi as a kind of “second skin,” she explores the intersection of mental health and environmental issues through processes of dyeing, printing, stitching, and layering.

Within “儚い (Hakanai),” silhouettes of Hatanaka’s body, created from hundreds of scraps of washi, intermingle with the motif of fish as koinobori, gyotaku of local ayu, and references to the fabled carp jumping up a waterfall for 100 years. The figures and fish have an uncanny weight, as they simultaneously seem to be falling, floating, recoiling and surrendering. For Hatanaka, these are an expression of her experience of multitudes: of loneliness, yearning, optimism and despair.

Hatanaka visited sites of traditional craft in the surrounding region. She used washi from Kiryu Seishi, in combination with her own paper and washi made by Kashiki Seishi in Kochi, with whom she fosters a long relationship. She incorporates koinobori prints created by Kiryu Tenugui in Kiryu, a city known for its textile production.

For generations, koinobori have been flown against Japan’s blue skies as a wish for the healthy growth of children, but they are seen less frequently due to Japan’s severe decline in the birthrate and cheaper alternatives made abroad, and an increasing number of workshops have stopped producing them. This is the result of a world under capitalism, also causing unprecedented loneliness, anxiety and depression. While intended to be celebratory, the koinobori can now be seen as a symbol of crises, more aligned with their original association with war.

The slowness of craft represented in the koinobori, Hatanaka’s use of traditional processes, and the washi-makers that uphold ancient technology and a healthy ecosystem, is a resistance to the acceleration, individualism and environmental destruction that capitalism is predicated on, that erodes our health and communities.

For Hatanaka, “Hakani” captures the anticipatory nostalgia of impermanence, and the need to gratefully experience moments of human connection and creation. In the same token, moments of suffering will not last either. While crafts will not stay the same forever, their evolving survival is part of imagining and co-creating another reality, which includes traditions that connect us to our bodies, nature and each other.

Suspended not in the open sky but in the atrium of the museum, the colorful, shifting forms of washi gently sway, raising a range of questions about our past, present, and future.