TAWADA YUKI
“THE SHAPE OF FORGETTING”

Language: English

Duration: approx. 1 h

“I see photography not as a way to preserve the past, but as a vessel for choosing how we forget. To burn, fold, or scrape an image is not destruction, but a quiet ritual to surface memory and emotion. These traces are not records—they are gestures that let us face the intangible, with the photograph acting as a yorishiro, a medium that invites what cannot be seen.

This began as a personal, process-based practice—like writing a tactile recipe.
Over time, it expanded into collaborative research at the university, shaped by dialogues with ceramicists and textile artists. Together, we explored how material and embodied knowledge transform photographic expression. In a time when AI generates images that mimic reality, I treat photography as a tangible dream—a surface where the hand leaves a trace, and reality is retold.”

Tawada Yuki (born in Hamamatsu, 1978) uses photography as well as sculpture and video in her work. She attended Tōhoku University, where she majored in biochemistry. As part of her university and graduate studies, she studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she fell in love with photography. After completing her studies in Japan, she attended Camberwell College of Arts at the University of the Arts London, where she became interested in the physicality of photography and the possibility of working with the surface of a photograph. Tawada engages with the themes of spirituality and healing, using innovative methods such as scraping and burning the surfaces of her photographs or creating sculptural installations with lacelike cutouts of photographs. Through mesmerizing immersive installations, she translates the deep spirituality of her work into physical experiences for viewers. Tawada currently teaches photography and video at Kyoto University of the Arts. Some of her works are currently on view at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt in the exhibition “I'm So Happy You Are Here”.

TAWADA YUKI“THE SHAPE OF FORGETTING”

TAWADA YUKI
“THE SHAPE OF FORGETTING”