2024.10.27

Mami HIRANO “METAMORPHOSES”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present METAMORPHOSES, a solo exhibition by Mami Hirano. The exhibition will open on November 30 (Sat) and run until January 12 (Sun) 2025. This will be the artist’s second solo show with the gallery.

Hirano is best known for her work, Revive a Unicorn (2014–), an ongoing project that attempts to materialize an imaginary unicorn through elaborate fabrication of its skeleton, organs, muscles, and skin. Equally important as her lifework is METAMORPHOSES (2018–).

In METAMORPHOSES, Hirano CT scans an urn containing the skeletal remains of her deceased dog and 3D prints them as glass or ceramic objects. The work is a practical endeavor to preserve and eternalize the lost life in the actual world. The methods Hirano uses to bring the remains back to existence are pâte de verre, an ancient glasswork technique originating in Mesopotamia, and ceramics. Transformed by her meticulous craft, the objects emerge, as if illuminated from within the deep darkness, as a sublime monument of memory.

The exhibition unveils a new iteration of this ongoing project, expanded with newly introduced processes. The new pieces include X-ray photographs of the remains and a dog-shaped photographic composition consisting of drawings of the dog skull and 3D-printed resin bone parts. Also showcased is a newly created piece inspired by Latin text from the opening of the Roman poet Ovid’s work, from which the project draws its title. We invite you to witness the current state of the project evolving since 2018.

—

The remains of my beloved dog–who passed away in 2015 after battling illness for five years–still sit in my parents’ living room, not having been put to rest after cremation. When my dog was cremated, I wanted once more to see those small and beautiful remains that my family and I had touched. However, feeling as if the urn was filled with the air of that bittersweet time, I could not open its lid. Once opened, that lost time could never be put back.
One day in 2018, I decided to take a CT scan of the box containing that urn. I turned the scan data of the remains into 3D data and output it with a 3D printer. I then made a mold of the resultant resin version of the remains, transforming them into varied materials, such as glass or ceramic. This act becomes an opportunity to amplify the entirety of this being, who lost everything and all memory at the boundary of death. By touching these varied materials and seeing this figure transform with its beauty intact, I have also come to accept my own transformations.

Modern funerals have kept death away from everyday life so that eventually, the dead no longer exist in society. The dead, hidden under heavy tombstones or in urns, are transformed repeatedly through my funeral methods; I do not lose them. That transformation process is told in this story. — Mami HIRANO

—

Mami HIRANO
Born 1989 in Gifu, Japan, Mami Hirano graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with an MFA in Intermedia Art in 2014. By choosing subject matters that are both real and imaginary–such as a unicorn and her beloved dog who was battling an illness–and faithfully producing all the elements that make up those life forms including bones, innards, muscles, and skin, Hirano creates works about the structures of these life forms, the preservation of life, and the topic of resuscitation. Her works are a deep reflection on absence and death, preservation and creation, and recognition and existence; and invites viewers in this modern age to ponder on how we should face these contemplations.
Hirano’s major shows include, Minami HIDA Art Discovery (2024), Invisibles in the Neo City (2023-24, SusHi Tech Square), solo show (2023, WHITEHOUSE Nao Nakamura), Imaginary Lesson (2023, Maki Fine Arts), Ab-sence/ac-ceptance (2021, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu), METAMORPHOSES (2021, 3331 Arts Chiyoda) and Frankenstein in 2018: Bio-art throws light on art, science, and society today (2018, EYE OF GYRE).