TEZUKAYAMA GALLERY is pleased to announce Hiroko Uehara’s solo exhibition, the first in three years, “Garden of Prayer”.

Uehara was born in Gunma Prefecture in 1985, and then she completed her master’s at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2012. Since then, she has continued to present work at her base in Kyoto.

Following her master’s studies, Uehara continued producing painting works and energetically began presenting sculpture works, expanding the range of her artistic expression.

Influenced by the animistic philosophy that spirits and gods dwell in nature, a belief that has been passed down in Japan since ancient times and which she had been interested in previously, she consistently creates works with the theme of the fusion of plants and humans with the descriptive skills she has developed in painting.

The creatures used as motifs have gentle expressions, and their delicately and softly expressed skin reveals a divine, soft, yet strong life force.

In her solo exhibition in 2021, Uehara was inspired by the Todowara, located on the Notsuke Peninsula in Hokkaido. In this exhibition, she focuses not on the nature of the places but on the ‘prayers’ people have conducted in various sacred locations.

This space will become a mystical place of calm tension as the works exude the hidden power of living creatures.