Blue Water

“Blue Water” (Umi: 1967–2022 Shimonoseki Tokyo) was published on the occasion of Sakiko Nomura’s first large-scale solo exhibition in her hometown of Shimonoseki (2022.2.11–3.27, Shimonoseki City Art Museum). The title’s timeline reads like a compressed biography—life and practice folded into a single spine. 

The book draws across roughly three decades of her work, combining key images with newly made photographs for the exhibition. It brings together recurring motifs—bodies, private rooms, fading flowers, windows, the pull of night—under one elemental figure: the sea. The volume also includes an original short story, “Umikaze,” commissioned from fellow Shimonoseki-born writer Shinya Tanaka, extending the project into a literary echo of place and memory. 

In this context, the sea is not a “theme” in the narrow sense; it functions as a vessel for Nomura’s long-standing tension between stillness and intensity, light and darkness. Page by page, “Blue Water” turns looking into duration—something tactile, returnable, and hard to replace.

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