TOKYO.- Hisako Sekijima (b. 1944) makes basketry works using plant materials. Basketry refers both to the techniques used to make baskets and to the objects made with them. Although Sekijima's works are baskets, they are not intended to hold anything. Sekijima focuses on the principles of interlacing, giving form to her ideas about basic fabricating methods such as twining, knotting, plaiting, and warp/weft weaving; the varied properties of plant materials; and the forms that emerge from combining materials and techniques. In Sekijima's case, the work is not simply the finished object but the thinking behind it: a process in which questions and hypotheses lead to discoveries and further ideas. A key part of her work's appeal lies in the clarity and directness with which she gives that thinking physical form.

Sekijima encountered American craft during a four-year stay in New York in the late 1970s. There, she saw artists adapting traditional techniques to create contemporary works and began to see baskets as a form of textile art. After returning to Japan, she took Japanese mingu (functional vessels and tools used in traditional rural life) as her starting point for reexamining old functional objects from around the world that were made by interlacing. Drawing on earlier research as well, she gradually established a way of working in which she approached interlacing from a universal perspective and developed her ideas on that basis.

Sekijima's analytical approach to her art conveys the joy of thinking and the thrill of discovery. Featuring works from the 1980s to the present, the exhibition explores how Hisako Sekijima's ideas about interlacing have developed and taken shape in her work.

Rather than becoming absorbed in the form itself, I am moved by the principles–

The process by which form emerges is certainly mysterious. Yet, instead of emotionally surrendering to that mystery, I want to keep my eyes open and understand why it occurs.

I think about where I can insert myself into the reality that the relationship between material and the construction method determines form.

I seek to discover how the transcendent structural principles of basket-making come into contact with the self. — Sekijima Hisako, from Basketry's Formulas (Japanese original title: Basketry no Teishiki), Heibon-sha Publishing Company.

Baskets About Baskets

For many years, I have assembled bark, vines, and other materials into small three-dimensional forms resembling baskets. I am fascinated by how various ideas and concepts are embedded within the form and function of baskets, almost like a puzzle. I translate the excitement of rediscovery into my own coded language and reshape it once again into form. This is my way of making baskets. What I might call "baskets about baskets".

Hisako Sekijima classifies the construction techniques into six primary methods: looping, loop-knotting, plaiting, coiling, weaving, and twining. Decorative patterns may look different on the outside, but she looks at the structural principles and categorizes them. The materials she uses are bark, stalks, and a foliage from familiar plants–mulberry, cypress, willow, paper mulberry–often grown in home gardens. Each is understood and selected for its characteristics, with construction techniques chosen in direct response to these qualities. From the interplay of material, method, and form, this triadic relationship forms a conceptual framework that underpins her thinking.

A Historical Perspective Clarifies the Act of Making

The techniques such as braiding rope and twisting thread, which are methods for thickening or lengthening fibers, form the basis of basketry and textile creation. Rope and thread are beautiful in themselves because they directly reflect the force and continuity of twisting. Since developing a particular fascination with the act of braiding fibers, I have continued producing the Re-cord series. In Re-cord II (pictured left), I inserted red cloth in regular time intervals while braiding the rope. The braided structure records the passage of time.

In Re-cord III (pictured left), I repeatedly twisted fibers a fixed number of times before picking up stitches from the previous row, gradually constructing a three-dimensional form while consciously engaging in the counting processes characteristic of knitting and weaving. After reading a book called, "Women's Work", which addresses the prehistory and ancient history of fiber technologies, I learned that the beginnings of twisted fibers, thread, and rope were estimated to date back approximately 25,000 years, and that this development was described as the "String Revolution". I was excited by the idea, sensing a connection to the technological innovations in the textile industry that symbolized the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution.

Before that, twisting fibers had merely been a preparatory step for making materials. Afterward, however, I began considering ways to create "forms that directly express the morphological fascination and structural role of twisting." I find it fascinating that historical perspectives can clarify one's awareness of making. Basket-making contains, in simple form, the various prototypes of techniques originating in prehistoric times: ways of utilizing the properties of materials to construct objects and fulfill practical purposes. Because of this, such techniques are easily grasped as concepts effective for sculptural expression. I then reclaim these concepts as the core of my own forms. For me, this is one of the great attractions of basket-making.

— From the artist's text on the work, Re-cord.

The turning point that led her to approach her work with an analytical mindset came in the late 1970s, when she encountered American craft. She was struck by the attitude she saw in the craft center classes, exhibitions at the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design), and the works of basketry artists such as Ed Rossbach and John McQueen: an attitude of re-examining traditional techniques and transforming them into expressive tools. Inspired, Sekijima began to view baskets as a form of textile art. Yet her practice extends far beyond this influence. Grounded in her cultural identity, she turned to Japanese folk tools and various traditional plaited objects from around the world. By combining existing research with her own structural inquiries, she developed a universal perspective that continues to shape her work.
Rather than accepting technique unquestioningly, I reinterpret each method in my own way–

The reason why such methods appear simple is not because they are introductory, but because they are close to the roots of the technique itself.

If creation is not simply the combination of existing techniques, then the further an artist advances, the more the techniques are broken down and simplified according to their own way of thinking.