MIKA HORIE


    ARTIST BIO & ARTIST STATEMENT

    Mika Horie is a Japanese artist who is one of the few modern practitioners of traditional Gampi papermaking. Mika Horie was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1984. Her interest in photography and Japanese paper-making began during her Bachelor studies at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. After graduating she worked as a freelance photographer and in 2008 she spent one year in the United Kingdom for a MA European Arts Practice (Fine Art) at Kingston University in London. In 2013 she established her own studio space in Kaga-city and after an apprenticeship with a traditional papermaker in Shiga, she started to pursue the primitive passions and aesthetic values of Japanese paper and cyanotype (blue) photography. Horie’s art works are fully handmade. The paper is made by her from local, organic and high quality raw materials. Her photographic process is nearly as laborious as the paper making.
    Her studio is located in the mountains of Kaga, Japan, where Gampi branches are accessible. According to Horie, the wild fibers of Gampi make strong paper with a “lustrous sheen and warm greenish hues.” Each paper that is produced by hand-pounding has irregular and distinct surfaces. Even though she claims that she is not trying to make new things, Horie innovates her own style by combining the traditions of Japanese papermaking and Western photography. She takes the oversize negatives of the pictures she took using the 8 by 10 camera, placing them on Gampi paper treated with iron salts, then lets the sun expose them directly on the paper resulting in cyanotype prints that can last more than 1000 years. 
    Indigo symbolizes the earth, plants, and creatures, which are part of the time that flows without a stop. In her studio, everything constantly and momentarily flows to the past creating layers of the past day by day. Horie tries to walk into this flow, capturing and contrasting timelessness and impermanence.
    Mika Horie was invited to solo exhibitions including "Life is a Circle" at Kamiji Kakimoto in Kyoto, Japan; "Waterfront II" at Trace in Kyoto, Japan; "Kodamasuru" at Gallery Misyo in Ishikawa, Japan; and "B3-304" at Ouchi Gallery in New York, USA.
    Horie's works were exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including "Paper Positions" in Berlin, Germany; "NEKO. De kat in de Japanse Kunst" at Japan Museum SieboldHuis in Leiden, Netherlands; "WABI SABI" at IBASHO gallery in Antwerp, Belgium; "Photo Basel" in Basel, Switzerland; and "NEKO Project" at Galerie ARGENTIC in Paris, France, to name a few. Mika Horie was selected to be part of the "2018 Art Trail, power by Tesla at Unseen" in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2018. Horie's works are in the collection of Olnick Spanu in New York, USA, and she was featured in media: SAVEUR, USA; Financial Times, UK; PHOTOWORLD, China; and Ishikawa TV, Japan.
    Mika Horie’s upbringing heavily influenced her interest in Man’yōshū (Japan’s oldest surviving poetry.) In celebration of these poems and the period of time that followed its success, reverence for living with nature took prominence. The artist’s use of handmade Gampi papers come from the Kurakakeyama mountains, located between Kaga City and Komatsu City, of which she harvests herself. Horie processes the gampi fibers by hand into delicate-looking but sturdy paper, onto which she prints cyanotype images of the landscape around her home.

    Incorporating the sky of the town of Shiga and Kaga, Japan, origins of the Gampi branches and fibers used in her work, to sustain the medium and its historical root. Horie treats her paper with iron salts, places the oversize negatives directly on top, and allows the sun to expose them to shades of cyan and deep indigo. Indigo symbolizes the earth, plants, and creatures, which are part of the time that flows without a stop.

    Artworks by Mika Horie