I Am Here for You by Rieko Koga

About

Rieko Koga is a contemporary Japanese artist currently living and working in Paris. The artist's work stands out by a monochrome yet expressive style, and an astounding mastery of contemporary textile language. Her handmade embroidery and stitches on white fabric build nearly sculptural and graphic-like objects and her works often acquire the features of installation art. Rieko Koga’s work embraces the experiences of both Japanese and Western culture, as well as existential themes, intersections of nature and civilization.

According to art critic Sonia Recasens, for Rieko Koga embroidery is an essentially spiritual practice, and the patient work involved invites contemplation. The thread of "encounter and memory" that she weaves becomes the seismograph of her moods, as if her prayers accompanied the needle in the poetic writing of the stitches. Fabric is no longer a piece of clothing but a membrane, like a second skin, imprinted with traces of reality, of memory and of the psyche. As she doesn't make any preliminary drawing, Rieko Koga embroiders like she thinks, like she writes, like she breathes, like she dreams. She stretches the thread of time with her needle for an intense exploration of deep self projected outside herself in the shape of stitches. This subtle alchemy of mind and body carefully interwoven by the magic of thread and needle touches and disturbs us.