Conceived as an exploration of the cherry blossom's ephemeral life cycle, the SAKURA series reflects on transience as a metaphor for the increasing precarity of our natural environment. Working over many years with trees embedded within the urban landscape, the artist has witnessed firsthand the perceptible effects of climate change on the shifts in seasonal blooms. Her annual encounters have become a study on time, resilience and vulnerability.
Over the course of this ongoing project, her focus became increasingly drawn to the blooming trees' outermost branches, the liminal threshold where their extremities meet the open skies and extend into the realm of infinite possibility.
Like Rorschach “pixel-blots”, the photographs are presented as diptychs composed of mirrored fractal views. The images depart from straightforward representation of cherry blossom trees through inversion and repetition, while carefully avoiding un-natural manipulations. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, their symmetrical structures invite viewers into an open process of interpretation in which recognisable forms, at times even faces, appear and dissolve through the phenomenon of pareidolia. In these imagined presences, some trees even begin to assume distinct identities and reveal hidden personalities.
Through this very subtle anthropomorphism, SAKURA seeks to foster a sense of kinship between viewers and their natural environment. The hope is that by encouraging subliminal recognition and sustaining attention, the works may cultivate and inspire a deeper commitment to its protection.
Ultimately, the artist's perennial aim is to challenge perception as a catalyst for reflection. By encouraging viewers to look more closely, more empathetically, she hopes they will discover unexpected connections, in this case between themselves and the living environment that needs their careful attention.