Introducing photographer Miho Kajioka's exhibition project curated by Nao Masaki, Gallery Director at VAGUE KOBE.
Miho Kajioka studied painting and photography in San Francisco and Montreal before beginning her artistic practice following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. In 2019, she gained international attention by becoming the first Japanese artist to win the prestigious Nadar Prize, awarded to the most outstanding photography book published in France. This exhibition marks the first chapter of a project featuring works selected from her photo book "And, do you still hear the peacocks?", published five years after the disaster.
Kajioka will return from Paris for the first two days of the exhibition and be present at the gallery alongside Director Nao Masaki.
The opening event will also feature a sake tasting session hosted by Fukushima's historic brewery Niida Honke.
We look forward to welcoming many visitors to this special exhibition.
Statement by NAO MASAKI
The artist, Miho Kajioka.
I first met her in Paris, where she lived. Amid the restlessness of my mind as I prepared to return home, she carefully unwrapped a package she had brought with her. With a mysterious gesture, she slowly unfolded the papers inside a box she called a "book," moving from one door to the next.
This uniquely bound book had text printed on the reverse side of folded pages—only visible if one peered inside.
The monochrome photographs on these pages floated through the space like fragments of small memories, inviting the viewer’s gaze to wander.
This book—melancholic, ephemeral, and beautiful—was born from her time as a journalist during the Great East Japan Earthquake. In the chaos of reporting, the feelings and impressions that could not be conveyed through the media accumulated and, as if slipping out of an overfilled box, took shape in this work.
These emotions and memories became the catalyst for Kajioka’s return to the world of art, which she had distanced herself from since her university days.
“I heard a distinct click, like something shifting inside me,” Kajioka recalls.
Through the medium of photography, Miho Kajioka seems to depict landscapes of memory that transcend self and others—landscapes of time that cannot be separated.
As I turned the overlapping fragments of this book, born five years after the earthquake, I found myself in tears.
Something I wanted to touch—something I could not touch.
Just as cherry blossoms bloom somewhere every spring, I want this work to travel, to meet people, and to intersect with the landscapes of everyday life—turning the fragile and uncertain emotions of memory into a tangible scene.
It feels right to hold this exhibition every March—whether large or small, with one piece or many, in private or public, in Japan or abroad.
I believe this work will always lead us to the right place.
Fourteen years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and thirty years since the earthquake in Kobe.
I am deeply grateful that, through a strange alignment of time, I am able to begin this endeavor here in the city of Kobe.
Nao Masaki
February 2025
At VAGUE KOBE
「And, do you still hear the peacocks?」In Collaboration with Gallery NAO MASAKI
21 Febー10 March, 2025
FridayーMonday 12-6pm
※Artist and Curator will be the gallery in first two days
Opening event : Sake tasting by Niida Honke (Fukushima)
VAGUE KOBE
4F Chartered Building, 9-2 Kaigandori, Chuo-ku, Kobe