Mona Sugata sculptures have captivated the contemporary art world with their delicate construction and profound sensory presence. Crafted from cotton fabric, thread, glue, and pigment, Sugata’s works explore the poetic boundaries between fragility and resilience. Her ongoing exhibition, What Resonates Through Us — Echoes in Overtones, currently on view at Galerie Ovo in Taipei, invites viewers to step into a realm where organic forms and quiet reverie intertwine.
Mona Sugata Sculptures: Breathing Life Into Thread and Fabric
Unlike typical representations of flora, Mona Sugata sculptures reflect a close, intuitive observation of the living systems in her own garden. Drawing inspiration from the subtle gestures of stems and the ever-shifting vitality of leaves, Sugata shapes untreated cotton into symbolic organisms. Her unique process involves coloring with diluted pigments and then etching delicate, vein-like patterns using a heated iron. “This is the moment when life begins to inhabit the work,” Sugata says, highlighting her process’s almost ceremonial quality. The result is a series of botanical installations that breathe with an otherworldly, surreal quality, alive yet dreamlike.
Botanical Installations Inspired by Ancient Rituals
Sugata’s contemporary Japanese art pays homage to deeper cultural roots. Works such as Pillar of Prayer Kumade and Pillar of Prayer Purple Star draw from the Japanese jichinsai, a traditional ground-breaking ceremony honoring the local land deity. These pieces, showcased at the Galerie Ovo Taipei exhibition, seamlessly blend ceramic bases (symbolizing the land god) with plant-like forms pushing upward, a visual meditation on coexistence and reverence for nature. They embody the artist’s belief in the sacred value of living in harmony with the environment.
Sugata’s celebrated installation, Tree of Life — A Planet of Playing Beings, extends these themes, presenting Earth as an interconnected field for both visible and invisible life, bacteria, insects, and spirits, constantly cycling through disappearance and return. The creation process, governed by physical intuition, leaves subtle traces of heat and touch, making each sculpture an evolving record of labour and sensitivity.
Through her Mona Sugata sculptures, Sugata invites us all to discover moments of quiet connection, reminding us that art, like nature, is alive with resonance and endless renewal.
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